Restless Natives

 

For this years Thanksgiving feast, the kids at Iain's school were encouraged to dress up as pilgrims or indians. (I know the politically correct term is 'Native American', but 'Indian' is what I grew up with. Plus, playing 'cowboys and native americans' just sounds dumb.) Iain and his buddy Jonathan dressed up like a couple of fighting braves. And surprise, surprise, but not a single boy in Iain's class wanted to dress up as a pilgrim. Iain said the indian costumes were cooler, so I guess shoes with buckles aren't the cool fashion trend for 2006.

 

Spirit Week

Every year, Iain's school has 'spirit week', where the kids dress up to match various themes, and this year was no different.

 

Monday was 'class color' day, where each grade is assigned a color, and they have to display as much of it as they can. Iain's class did so well, they won the judges vote for most spirited.

 

Tuesday was 'explorer day', so Iain and his friend Jonathan were ready to go off on safari.

 

Wednesday was 'fiesta day', so there was a clear south-of-the-border atmosphere, and a lot of kids with hats from Chevy's.

 

Thursday was one of the more interesting themes. Since the school's motto for the year is "Family Matters", they went with a family theme - 'Grandparents day'. Kids could either dress up according to their grandparent's professions, or they could dress up to look like one of their grandparents. Iain chose the latter, and dressed up like Faith's dad. Pretty good likeness. ;-)

 

Men's Camp

 

Once or twice a year, the men of our church get together and have an one-night campout up at Mount Madonna State Park (between Gilroy and Watsonville). The boys run wild in their camoflage gear, while the men sit around the campfire and talk. Then we eat way too much for dinner, and scare the kids with stories of digger-wolves and tunnel-spiders. Generally speaking a good time is had by all. (well, except the mom's when we drag all that dirt home with us)

 

Pumpkin Patch and Apple Farm

Back in October, I took a couple of days off of work, because... well, I was tired, and I hadn't been spending enough time with the kids. To rectify that, we did a couple of outings.

 

Notably, we visited Uesugi Farms here in Morgan Hill, to see their pumpkins, and for the kids to ride around on their scaled train ride.

 

Following that, we headed over the hills to Watsonville to visit Gizdich Ranch, where they grow and harvest apples. They make an awesome dutch apple pie!

What Happened?

So no posts in 2 months, what's the deal, right? Well, as with most things, the best of intentions isn't the same as action, and things have been busy. But now it's Thanksgiving, and presumably I have a little time to catch up on some of the highlights. Hopefully, from now on I'll be a little more regular in posting, but no promises.