Pumpkin Picking 2010

In an effort to make San Diego have a season, we went to the Bates Nut Farm with Bobby and Shelly. Although it was great to do a 'fall' activity, doing in 90 degree heat kind of took away from the experience.

There was much deliberation about what made the perfect carving pumpkin, but in the end we each picked our own, along with a few smaller pumpkins and gourds for decoration.

There had been a scarecrow building contest the day before and our favorite entire were the Mythbusters!

Being the big kids that we are, we all had to take turns pushing each other around in the wheel barrow.

Miramar Airshow

In keeping the military base theme...two weeks later we were at the Miramar Airshow with the Lumpkins again. All of the boys, including the grown-up ones, were drooling over all of the planes and performers. The finale was of course the Blue Angels, which never gets old no matter how many times I have seen them. It is amazing how close they can fly those jets, and with such precision.

Connor's favorite perch during the show was my shoulders. He had picked out his toy airplane earlier in the day and kept holding it up every time a plane flew overhead.

...Happy Boys!!!!

Tony spent an entire day sewing all of the patches on Connor's aviator so he could have it during the show.

North Island Speed Weeks

Sorry it has been a while since our last post. I'll try to pick up my share of the posting so Trine doesn't always have to do it.

This summer we joined to the Lumpkins at the North Island Speed Weeks. It is the one time each year that they close down the Naval Airstation and let the public drive onto the taxiways for a week of car racing. Chevy was offering rides in their new Corvette's so of course I couldn't resist. The course was relatively short but it was plenty windy which made it fun.

Here are all the Lumpkin men watching the classic Mustang races while enjoying some lemonade. Tony has gotten pretty good at carrying all the boys at the same time.

A Shelby for Shelby...Trine insisted that we take this picture for her sis.

Even Connor found a ride that he could enjoy.

John also went on a short hike with Emma while I was in class with Mishka and Jasper. Colorado is gorgeous!

Just as John was heading down from his hike, he found out there was a wildfire on the next ridge down from his hike. He barely made it out of the mountains before they closed the road.

John spent his afternoons around 6 of these P3's go and douse the wildfire. He was in heaven.

Our ride back through Colorado...Vail was gorgeous.

Dog festival

Last weekend, we headed to a dog festival to try and get our foster dog, Tucker, adopted. John signed up Emma for a little agility contest and she ended up winning 1st place! She loved having that time with all the attention, especially John's attention. As you know all know, she had a very proud dad and mom. It was fun to see the hundreds of dogs attending the festival, including about 10 Great Danes that we loved watching.

Summer with Cammie, Tony, and the boys

Just a few pics of the boys (no not ours, our friends Cammie and Tony), Connor, 20 months, and Christopher, about 3 months in this picture. We headed one Sunday afternoon to a free concert in a park in San Diego. John and Connor had lots of fun running around while Chris napped through the whole thing.

Another of John's toys

John got to fly this Agusta-Westland 139 helicopter when they came to town on a demo tour.

Biking in Coronado

John and I have been riding our roadbikes a lot recently. For a few weekends in a row, we road around San Diego Bay (around 30 miles) and ended up on Coronado Island. We then would take the ferry back across the Bay and ride home. As you can see on my knee and my elbow, not every ride went smoothly.

Sometimes San Diego is Ok

So sometimes San Diego just gets to be too much....traffic, too many people, too busy....but then sometimes there are moments that San Diego is "livable". We decided to take the dogs to the dog beach a few days ago and the sunset was absolutely beautiful. Ok, I guess I can survive living here another year.

Shelly's bridal shower

So my little sister is getting married in 5 weeks and of course we needed to have a bridal shower for her. I flew home to NY to help my mom throw a shower this past weekend. It has been beyond hot in NY recently, but the weather was absolutely perfect for the shower. We had it in my parents yard under a white tent, with lots of flowers (thanks to mom), and lots of good food and friends.

Cupcakes courtesy of Coccadotts in Albany. They were beautiful and awfully tasty!

Dave of course had to stop by to chow down on all our goodies!

Of course we had to make the traditional bow hat/bouquet for the ceremony rehearsal.