Halloween

Halloween night was highly anticipated by Courtney and Ashlyn. They both wore homemade butterfly costumes--thanks Meemaw. It was a beautiful and cold night. The girls and I walked our neighborhood while Becky manned the bowl at home. We saw many families and neighbors out walking with their kids. Tiger followed our neighbor up two streets before they carried him home. Ashlyn headed home to eat candy after she was done with our street but Courtney and I lasted a few more streets. The girls had a great time and it was consider, by all, a very successful Halloween.

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Cousin's Blustery Day

After our ice skating adventure, we walked through River Front Park. It was a cool fall day and it was cute to watch the cousins play in the leaves.

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First Time on the Ice

We had another first today, Courtney and Ashlyn went ice skating. We have an outdoor ice skating rink downtown at River Front Park. We have the girls signed up for ice skating lessons and thought we should get them down there and give them a chance to get use to the idea. It was rather comical at first because they could not even stand still without falling. After about a half an hour, they started to get used to the concept. The actually had long moments of skating by themselves. They had a great time and are looking forward to their lessons.

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Courtney without Training Wheels

Today Courtney rode her dirt bike (go-go) for the first time without training wheels. She finally showed an interest since she can ride her bike so well now.

In honor (and safety) for this occasion, we bought her some boots. She calls them her go-go boots--which gives some of you old timers a whole different meaning.

She did really well and fell several times because she forgot that the training wheels were not there. She would anticipate the bike leaning the opposite way to rest on the training wheel only to find that nothing was there.

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Steelhead Fishing

I went steelhead fishing for the first time today down in Orofino, Idaho. I fished the Clearwater River with a guide. I decided to use a guide because I have never fished for steelhead before and wanted to learn the technique. Well, I learned how and got lucky enough to limit out by noon with three steelhead.

I have never caught a fish that fights like a steelhead before. The biggest one took me well over 10 minutes to get him into the boat. Three times I got him to the boat only to watch him run as he stripped over a 100 yards of line out. Between the running up and down river, head shaking, and the extreme pull on the line I thought for sure I was going to loose him.

The fish I caught traveled over 500 miles and traverse numerous dams to reach this point. The are strong, persistant, and beautiful fish. The look like a rainbow trout but act like a salmon.

The only mistake that I made was telling my friends that I was going steelhead fishing. The night after I got back, I had about 15 people show up for dinner. I cooked six pounds of filets for an hour on our new grill using a mixture of maple and mesquite wood chips. It was yummy.

Seattle Aquarium

On a spur of the moment, we decided to go to Seattle and visit the aquarium. We had plans this weekend but they were dashed by the rain.

We stayed in a hotel and the girls got to do a few of their favorite things: jump on the beds, swim, and order room service for breakfast.

We drove out Saturday morning and went straight to the aquarium. We were all pleasantly surprised. It's a really nice aquarium and they have lots of exhibts geared for kids. The girls loved the river otters and the giant fish tank with a wide variety of salt water fish.

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