Haunted gingerbread houses

One of my favorite Christmas traditions is making gingerbread houses with the kids, but I've always wanted to do Halloween houses. So this year we finally did it! Jamie made the gingerbread, Burke & Dean picked the candy, and I made the frosting! Tons of fun and I think they look pretty good! And my house finally doesn't smell like burnt garlic bread:)

For Nicole!

4th folder...4th picture...would be Dean at California Adventures waiting to get on the bumper cars. Nothing too exciting!

FYI

You can't cook 10 loaves of garlic bread at the same time. Well, you can...but 5 of them will turn out like this......and your house will fill with noxious black smoke...and your family will complain about the smell for days...and your daughter will bake cookies and brownies in an effort to make the house smell better...but it won't work.

*why was I cooking 10 loaves?...to feed the football team, of course!*

Spelunking!

Have you ever seen the billboard on the 99 for Moaning Caverns? Well, I've always wanted to check it out. So Jim's parents were here for a few days and that gave me the perfect reason for an adventure. It's kinda far to drive for the day, but it was pretty amazing. The cavern is like 150 deep, big enough to hold the statue of liberty! You walk down 4 or 5 claustophobic staircases until you get to the rickety rusty spiral stairs that take you to the bottom.

Dean was totally freaking out which helped me to not freak out cuz I'm a little afraid of falling to my death. But once we got down it was pretty cool to look around at all the stalactites. I thought one wall looked like globs of marshmallows.

It wasn't quite as good as the illegal cave/mine explorations we would do in Utah with Mike, but we have kids now! Moaning Caverns is close to Big Trees, so next time I'd combine the two for a perfect day!

Not a fan

There are a lot of things that are bugging me right now. The presidential race, the economy, our Taco Bell got demolished, etc. Nothing to freak out about, but the spot in my brain designated for annoyances has been filling up. But the thing that really ticks me off, the thing that I just can't tolerate is 8-packs of Pepsi products replacing 12-packs. Did they think we just wouldn't notice? Boo Pepsi. Shame on you.

You are cordially invited

Today the kids made a bride for Dean out of Legos. Her name is Sabrina. They came and got me when it was time for the wedding. They both said, "I do"...

...and then he shot her!

Do you think they need professional help?

The last of the cruise

After Boston we went to Portland, Maine where there are a lot of cool lighthouses.
Our next stop was the Bay of Fundy in New Brunswick. They have the highest tides in the world there. The two pix below were taken somewhere in the middle of the tides, but you can still see the difference.

This time lapse video is pretty cool. It shows the tides come in and go out in 30 seconds.


The tides create these rock formations along the coast. These are the Hopewell Rocks. The water goes out about a mile at low tide and then almost fills the whole under the arch at high tide. Pretty crazy.
Our final stop was Halifax, Nova Scotia. Something I never knew was that 330 bodies were recovered from the sea after the Titanic sank. 150 of those bodies are buried in Hailfax. It was amazing to see the same death date on so many tombstones. Here is the one that inspired the Jack Dawson character for the movie. The number 227 on the tombstone signifies that he was the 227th body recovered.Needless to say, we counted the lifeboats on the first day!So that's it! It was a fun vacation and I had a great time. But I'm not sure cruises are the way I like to travel. I like exploring places and experiencing the people, subways, culture, etc., more than making pit stops. Plus, now I gotta lose the 5 pounds I gained cuz all you do on the ship is eat, eat, eat! But it was worth it:)