October. happened. We have been busy doing lots of things on the weekends but I can't really remember most of them. For the sake of journaling I'll try to recall some. We went to a funerary service for Teresas cousin, Ryan Just. It was good to have the kids introduced to some of her side of the family. On my birthday weekend I went for a hike up Cucamonga peak in the sheep creek wilderness.
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| Other dude hanging out eating lunch looking at Mt. San Gorgonio. Me on rock like that but with camera creepily taking pictures of strangers.
As I said that weekend was my birthday celebration. Since my birthday was on a Monday and I have to work Mondays we cooked cheesy potatoes, wood smoked salmon and steak on Sunday night and had chocolate ice cream filled cupcakes. The kids helped me blow out the candles.
 
I got hiking/ backpacking stuff for my birthday. A shirt, a Jetboil (if you don't know you ought-a).
The next week Lancaster School district had a scheduled day off and since Aidens preschool follows that schedule that meant I had the kids on a Wednesday. I thought I would take them for a hike on the LA side of the San Gabriel mountains to a waterfall.
 
The hike was supposed to be super short (why I chose it) but information on it was sparse since it was closed in 2009 because of a fire. I tried to find any info I could and found a few sources saying it was open, so off we went.
From the parking lot you were supposed to walk through a small campground to the trail then 1/4 mile to the falls. When we arrived in the campground things got pretty weird. There were abandoned broken tents and trailers strewn about. There was a hand written sign saying that there was a bear attacking people in the campground and that camping wasn't allowed. It wasn't on NFS stationary and from my understanding the area was open so we kept walking. The kids marveled at HUGE grey squirrels flying through the trees. We got to the trailhead and it was gated off and closed. We turned around and walked back to the car!!! WOOH!!!!
Luckily I had a back up plan. Since we were on the LA side of the mountains we were close to the Kidspace Childrens museum in Pasadena. It's a mostly outdoors science based joint. The weather was great so we went there. We partied hard, got messy, made paintings and petted newts. None of which is pictured b/c bringing my nice camera to a childrens museum like that isn't a super idea and I didn't have the cheaper camera.
That weekend we went to recfest at paramount ranch in the Agoura hills area. The kids practiced casting a fishing pole and generally learning about the outdoors. Then we went to Lombardi Ranch which is a cool pumpkin patch feature in previous years blog/ journal entries. (again no pics)
This week was obviously Halloween on Friday. T and Z were allowed to dress up for school but no wig for Z. Anybody know what Teresas costume is?
We carved pumpkins that night. (or rather I carved under direction/ supervision)
5 pumkins resulted in a lot of home made roasted pumpkin seeds!
Then the kids got dressed up and went trick or treating!
 
Our neighborhood was characteristically dead but one neighborhood over apparently wasn't so the kids made off with a nice haul and had a great time. Hooray.!...
Coming up we don't have too much going on until the end of the month.
Till Next Time
RTSZA
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