Richard's 40th Birthday - Basketball and Dinner

Since the folks at Dry Fly were kind enough to start the bottling party at 10:00, the boys were able to finish in time to attend the WSU Cougars basketball game at the Spokane Arena. (The boys will tell it was because they were such efficient bottlers)

To celebrate Richard's birthday, family and friends joined us at Luigi's for a nice Italian dinner. I think the best part was looking at pictures of Richard over the years!

It's official, Richard is now 40! I can't believe I'm married to a 40 year old!!

Thanks to everyone for joining me in celebrating Richard's birthday!! He was surprised!!

Richard's 40th Birthday - The Bottling Party

Yes, it's hard to believe but Richard turned 40 on December 12! I planned a full day of activities for him to celebrate:

To start off the day, Richard and his friends got to enjoy a bottling party at Dry Fly Distillery in Spokane. They had the task of bottling 72 cases of Dry Fly's famous vodka. Somehow they managed to bottle it the fastest in 1.5 hours and buy the most bottles of alcohol!! Big surprise from that group!

These are barrels of whiskey but the boys didn't get to sample it - only the birthday boy got a taste!

The final product!

The bottling crew!

Thanks to all those that made Richard's birthday bottling party a success - not that I had to twist any of their arms!!

Trick or Treat

My little bumblebees started off the night snooping our own candy bowls....

But they still got lots of candy!!

Cade is the Bumblebee Transformer and Ragan is the cute bumble bee. :o)

Views from the Train Ride

The sun wasn't shining but at least the fog lifted so we had some pretty views on the train ride. This is the town of Metalline, across the Pend Oreille River, almost to the point where we came back to Ione.

This is some property that was owned by the Perkins family (now owned by someone else) but they buried prominent members of their family amongst the grove of trees on the right. I liked the tree colors you could see in this picture.

This is the view of Box Canyon Dam from the train when we stopped on the trestle.

This is a view on the other side of Box Canyon Dam - it's a pretty amazing canyon!

More Train Ride

The train even got robbed when we stopped in Metalline Falls!!

Does it look like they were trying to escape?!?!

Train Ride

Last weekend we went up to Ione with Bill, Sharon, Loran, Justin, Shannon, Maia, Betsy, Kennet and Elsa to ride the scenic train to Metalline Falls. It was a little chilly out so we rode in the enclosed car, but it was still very pretty. This is the train as it pulled up to the station before we boarded.

This is a picture of the train that I took after our train ride. We decided to go up to Metalline Falls and drive around Sullivan Lake but we had to wait for the train to pass first. You can see the first two cars are enclosed (we were in the first car).

This is the caboose, which you can see the three open cars in yellow. They kinda looked like they should haul cattle!

Again, after the train ride on our way to Metalline Falls we stopped by Box Canyon Dam and caught the train going over the trestle.

Ragan's Preschool Program

Ragan's preschool class had a fall program this afternoon. They basically recited a few poems and then we ate muffins that they made in school today. They were actually pretty tasty - just a box of spice cake and a big can of pumpkin then they sprinkled powder sugar on top.


You can barely see Ragan in this picture holding up her artwork of pumpkins on a fence.


They carved pumpkins today, too - Ragan said this was her pumpkin with the clown carving.

Doesn't it look like Elmo is trying to eat her muffin?!?!