Sprinkler Spiders Webs and Halloween

I live amid farming fields, pastures, and orchards. I love the quiet because I can hear birds and crickets, and early summer mornings I can hear the peacocks that someone keeps a couple of miles away. My children and I have watched this cherry orchard below with great interest. We were sad when the owner tore down the old orchard and excited to see new rows of trees laid out and planted, with sprinkler lines connecting the tree dots. This is the orchard's second summer. One of the beautiful scenes is driving to school around 8:30 a.m. just as the sun peeks over the mountains and lights up the water spraying underneath the trees. The jets are only visible going east. When I turn around to come home on the same road, now westbound, the water is nearly invisible. I think the sprays look like gigantic watery spider webs. These trees are bare now, ready for winter.

We managed to get ready for Halloween in spite of spending most of our time at the hospital (my husband was just released from a 3 1/2 week hospital stay. Maybe more on that later). Bronwyn had her heart set on being an Indian princess this year. I happened to have some upholstery fabric I bought a few years ago for some kind of a costume that needed to look like sueded leather. We threaded beads on the fringes, stitched on some beads on the front, and my mother graciously took on the aggravating task of sewing on the cool ribbon trim. I won't be switching careers to upholstering furniture any time soon. This fabric is a nightmare to sew on. Bronwyn and I had fun designing the hair decorations. She found a design she liked and she painted it on the two flat wood disks I found in the wood craft section of our local JoAnn's.

Owen's favorite band du jour is Apocalyptica -- a Finnish heavy metal cello band -- four cellists and a drummer. Their music really is kind of cool, kind of like Trans Siberian Orchestra. Owen pieced together this band member outfit the night before:

Owen has since adopted scarves as his favorite accessory and wants to own this top hat himself. I'll take this over piercings and tattoos any day.

Liam wanted to be a ninja this year. He actually wore the balaclava part of the costume a couple of years ago, but took one look at the tabard and said, "That looks like a dress. I'm NOT wearing that!!" This year he looked at the gold shiny dragons on the tabard and said, "That is the coolest thing ever. I'm wearing THAT!"
I didn't get a picture of Evan because he was not around at picture time. He went to a school Halloween party dressed as his dad, in his dad's sports jacket and tie, and he carried around my college copy of the Riverside Shakespeare. Everyone knew just who he was. It was pretty awesome.