I hope everyone had a great Halloween.    Camille and Griffin seemed to have had a great time. 

Camille was a spider queen.   So I painted her face and she was so happy to finally get to dress scary this year. 

Is this my daughter?    Yep I think she looks pretty scary!   

Griffin was Darth Vader.    He was excited too.  His costume was a little easier to get together.

They went Trick or Treating at their dad's neighborhood.

The neighborhood had a hayride that took all the kids to the different houses.   That was fun for them.    Now we have a ton of candy which is not a good thing for me because I am very bad at raiding their candy bags.. 

This is what I saw after I dropped the kids off.  What a great start to a great Halloween night!

A few days ago we made carmel apples.

Camille and Griffin did a great job making them.. 

Note:  When melting the carmel don't let it burn on the bottom of the pan or it will have the dark brown mixed in the carmel.   Still tasted good though.   

Yum Yum...   Hope everyone else had a great Halloween!!

Here are some of the photos I have been working on that I took in CA.    

This is my favorite.    

Terry and I took the kids to our local Fiber Festival.    Fiber as in wool...  not Food... 

It was pretty fun...

Camille and Griffin did pony rides

Abe Lincoln was there...

There were lot's of sheep...

Sheep with haircuts.....

And sheep getting a haircut...

We stopped and play at the stream...

Griffin got to wash a rag the really old fashion way...

And there were babies.

This is a friend of mine's grandson.   Isn't he a cutie?

We all had a good time.   Something different to do on a weekend.   

How cool is this?

Camille and I wanted to make snowflakes so I did a search and found this site.  Look what I made.

and...

Then I cut this one out of paper

I didn't know how to make cool snowflakes until I made one on the website then making one with paper was easy.     Some of the ones others have made are incredible. 

Warning:  This is a long post.   After getting home,  getting over being extremely tired, catching up with work and dealing with the internet going on and off,  I was finely able to finish this crazy post! 

We left the Bed and Breakfast on Thursday morning.   It was raining, again, but we had a good trip.   It took us 6 1/2 hours to get to San Francisco.  Even though it was raining we still got to see a few cool things along the way.   

After leaving Klamath we saw a sign that said Elk crossing.   Here in Tennessee we see Deer crossing all the time and sometimes we see a deer.  So when we saw a sign that said Elk Prairie we thought we would stop and see if we saw an elk.     Well...

We saw a whole bunch.   They were hanging out at a rest area.   

There were signs all over the place saying if you see elk , do not approach them.   

But since these were all laying down I thought it would be o.k. to get a little closer.    They didn't seem to mind. 

The drive from Northern California to San Francisco was so beautiful.    We would go from ocean scenes like this:

To river scenes like this:

In just a matter of minutes.   It really was just amazing!!

We even saw Big Foot!!

One thing I didn't get pictures of was the vineyards.    It was raining too much to stop to take pictures but man was the landscape beautiful with all the grape vines all over the place!

We arrived in San Fran around 5:30.  Rush hour traffic and rain.  A perfect combo for a big city.   Ha Ha

After getting settled in our room, we decided to do a little shopping in Union Square.    Terry felt right at home in this busy, noisy place, I wanted to go back to the wilderness.   I am not all that comfortable in the middle of a big city.  Give me the sound of crickets over car horns any day!!

This is the view from our room.   We were on the 9th floor of the Chancellor Hotel . 

The next morning the sun was shinning and I was rested and ready to conquer the big city.   Our first stop for the day was Alcatraz!!!!   We did the tourist tour because two or three people said that it was a really interesting tour.    I loved it!!    I was more interested in the plant life than anything but hearing about the history and the prisoners was pretty awesome too.      

I love the green moss all over the roof.   

Alcatraz became a prison as early as 1859  and shut down in 1963.   The salt water has done it's damage to the outsides of the buildings  but the cells and inside look like they did all those years ago.   Not your  grand hotel by any means...

This is in the dinning hall.

There were a lot of broken windows.

This was the warden's house.   All the flowers on the floor are Milkweed.    Uhhh funny how some seeds made it into my pocket.     How cool to grow Milkweed from Alcatraz!

This plant is called a Century Plant.  It grows all around the edges of Alcatraz.    I think it was put here so if anyone tried to escape they would be caught by the thorns...   

Look at the thorns on this plant!   I don't know what kind of plant this is but I would hate  to fall on it. 

This succulent was my favorite of them all.   It is called Tree Aeonium.   um mm  funny how a small rosette jumped right in my pocket...   they are easy to root.  I don't think anyone will miss it.    Aren't they beautiful.   They were also all over San Francisco.   

These flowers were so beautiful.  This is a Fuchsia .  Camille and I think it looks like a fairy.   

The view of the city is great from Alcatraz.   

There it is The Rock.     Pretty Cool! 

After spending the morning on The Rock we decided to go to Chinatown.   So Terry flagged down this guy...

the guy that peddles the bike that has two seats in the back.  I don't know what that is called but it was a neat way to see the city.    He was from Poland and going to the Art school here.     He took us the long way from Fisherman's Wharf to Chinatown so we could see more. 

We walked around for a while and bought a few goodies, like cakes, ginger and some candy. 

I loved the markets that were everywhere.    So much color!

Even people's underware looked cool. 

We left San Fran Saturday morning.    We had to fly into San Diego and I saw the fires from the plane.   I just didn't know at the time what it was.  It was a beautiful day and I thought it was strange that there was a section of the landscape covered in clouds. ( so I took a picture)  It was the smoke.   I didn't know about the fires until the next day. 

So that is all.   We got home late Saturday night.   It was such a great trip.    So good for me.  So much fun and I had a great time taking around 800 pictures...    See I could really torture everyone with many more photos!      

I really want to go back and take the kids.    Hopefully one day I will!