Is there light at the end of a rainbow?

Okay does it seem odd to you because it does to me that an inanimate object can depress some one as much as it is me.... Yesterday was the start of a particularly horrendous day when the delivery people of the stove finally showed up at 7.15 in the morning... it was still dark for goodness sake. On top of that it was... yes you've guessed it... raining. I had to lock poor Milo in the basement as these 4 huge guys struggled to bring my 615lb stove up the stairs into the house into the kitchen. It did help that they took off the doors first and removed all the oven racks etc... but then as they are bringing it into my house, two of the knobs fell off - they were broken thank you very much and it took them almost an entire hour plus 2 more guys to put the oven doors back onto the stove before they left, with the stove not flush against the wall, finger prints all over the stainless steel doors and I noticed that the base of the stove that covers the installation was completely missing. Being a Saturday I couldn't get hold of anyone in customer service to complain. On top of that part of my order was missing. I don't know about you but when you spend $8,000 (yes I did say $8,000) on a stove you expect it to be in one piece in pristine condition. I am not happy about it. And now every time I walk into the kitchen I get depressed all over again because I see this monstrous stove in my house and did I mention that I am not happy about it. Maybe it's just that it's reminding me of all the work we still need to do in there and in a very short period of time... I don't know what it is, but now I don't like my kitchen.

On top of that I'm down stairs doing the laundry and notice that my wall is seeping water from all the rain into the laundry room. Thank god we have a drain in there, but that can't be good. And finally the icing on the cake, while trying to unblock a toilet yesterday - don't ask, I flush and water pours out the back of the tank onto the floor. I just couldn't catch a break.,

Oh well I guess there is a light at the end of the rainbow - am I mixing my metaphors? but the rain did stop briefly for a rainbow to come out... check out the photo...


Well I'm corralling the kids into picking and raking up leaves so got to dash... it's one way to keep me out of the kitchen!

Another day... another raindrop!

Okay it's official the weather in Portland sucks!... but hey at least we have water, I was reading online today how the South-east of this country is in a serious drought that they might run out of water soon so I guess I can be thankful for small mercies or in their case a huge one.

I'm sitting here listening to Owen play piano with his new piano teacher and I think Owen likes him, so we'll see how this goes. He's young with a new baby and he only gets 30 mins a week but they maybe the best for Owen.

Morgan is still at a school doing cool school - Mad Science, I hope she's having a good time and then we need to pick her up in a few minutes so I can then get Owen over to soccer. Phew! Tired just talking about it.

Any way here is a picture of Morgan and believe it or not this is a manmade rain picture as even though I had a photo assignment to do about water, there wasn't any rain last week during the time I needed to complete the project.
Enjoy.

Visiting the pumpkin patch

Thursday was field trip day for Owen's class and we took a quite scenic drive down through Oregon City to Bauman Farms. The kids had a blast. The learnt how to make fresh apple cider, ran around playing in the maze and ate Cider apple doughnuts before hoping on the hayride and heading to the pumpkin/corn fields to pick out their own pumpkin, gourd and indian corn to bring home. It was quite something trapezing (sp?) through the mud looking for the perfect pumpkin.
Difference in Oregon is that they are not all placed in neat rows of pumpkins ready for you to pick out the perfect pumpkin, here you have to really look for them. My only major complaint is that the field didn't seem so big and the kids didn't get a ton of time to explore the farm. Perhaps it was because it was a week day, because not all the attractions were open and Owen was quite disappointed he couldn't go on the zip lines. But we lucked out with the weather, and I promised them we'd go back on the weekend for them to try out all the fun activities they have, so we're going to go with out neighbors the Reilly's tomorrow.

Yesterday was a school free day for the kids and we managed to have a blast. We started the day making a video of the house for the kids to send to their friends (Only problem being I don't have the cables to transfer the film to my computer for editing, so I had to go to ebay to buy the cable - shipping cost more than the cable but it was still under $6 so oh well). After that we mowed the lawn, picked up the leaves, put up our halloween decorations (pre- Darren of course) made ghost cookies, did some art work for my eco-bag project and that was all before 3 o'clock. I was exhausted by then so the kids ended up watching some TV while I finished the laundry et al... I did get to go out for a girls night out with Alecia, we headed downtown to have sushi at the Dragonfish - which was really good and then went across the street to see the movie "Michael Clayton" which was excellent. Highly recommend that movie if you like intelligent films. So there you are up-to date with my latest and greatest... life as usual is busy, busy, busy!

Rain.. rain and yep you've guessed it.. more rain.

So okay we are officially into the wet weather. I knew it was going to rain and I kind of welcomed it. But I can see this is going to be a very long winter. And adjusting to it, is going to take some time. Still with this wet weather has come the cold, unseasonably so I am told and as a result the leaves have begun to change and are quite spectacular. Darren who has been gone 10 days now, is really bummed because he is missing out on the leaf change and I'm not sure we will have that many by the time he gets back at the end of October. But you never know.

The kids are loving it sort of. Although they have complained it is too cold, but now that they have their wellie boots puddle splashing is a definite must. The other day we went on a walk to go check out the fall colors. Here are some of our photos

As you can see the kids are on the hunt for the perfect leaf.

And there are soo many to choose from. This here is Morgan & mine favorite tree. But as you might have guess that also changes as the leave change too.Especially as they turn a firey red.