November

 

Look what we got done this past weekend!  Yay.  As always we wish Kai could enjoy photo time. 

We were all home this weekend. So rare. Mom came for pictures and to help me wrap presents. 

I'm trying to get a jump on Christmas so Dec can be more relaxing. Relieving the mental load.

It sure went a lot faster than usual!

Thanks for the help Mom.

Four more sleeps until we leave.  Are we ready?  Sort of.  We personally are.  The Commander was ready then Eric took it to the dealership to have the new key programmed.  We brought it home and it quickly went into limp mode.  Arg.  Way too coincidental for us.  So now it's back to our mechanic today to check things out. We'll see.  We were excited about taking a comfy automatic suv for the long drive but either Wrangler will do.  It's just a lot of gearing through Seattle, Sacramento and L.A.  

Then our washing machine puked a whole lot of what looked like vomit into a load.  ?  Wild.  So there was a scramble to figure that out.  Luk has been doing laundry but gets settings wrong so we're unsure if the dryer is occasionally not drying the load or if it's a user issue.  Then our hot water tank quit heating on Saturday.  Oy.

Eric got new thermostat and elements for the hot water tank and then it wasn't heating fast enough so he was calling plumbers.  They are mostly unavailable on the weekend and the one he found wanted double time.  So I said it could wait until Monday.  We can boil water and there is a shower in the trailer.  And then hours later it was discovered that we did indeed have hot water again after all.  Eric was just impatient.  I've been complaining about the amount and temperature of the hot water for ages and ages so I'm thrilled to have scalding water again.  I gave Eric permission this morning to go ahead and empty the hot tub any time now so it's done before Thursday.

The logistics of the calendar is a bit nuts for Mom, Fei and Gramma.  I wrote out a day by day of who needs to be where and when. Fei has the roughest day of running around on the first day.  She'll get to experience the back and forth across town we have to do occasionally.  It was unfortunate that we just couldn't cancel the appointment midday that screws that day all up.

Today I wrote out a grocery list of simple meals for Lili to cook.  Mom is doing four dinners, Lili is doing five. 

Lili is off today to Vancouver with a friend to see Sabrina Carpenter.  Their Hullo ferry was canceled and they rebooked an earlier one.  They got there to find it canceled as well.  So they've raced to Departure Bay and made it on a ferry with 8 minutes to spare.  The storm is brewing here now too.  Fingers crossed they're able to come home tonight as planned. The suckiest part of living on an island for sure. I just updated Eric on the ferry sitch and he said "sucks living on an island".  Haha.  Yup.  

Halloween

 

Happy Halloween.

Things are sure changing around here with teens and adults.

It's not quite the event it used to be.

Yesteryear.

When things were a tad easier.

Luk went to a friend's to hang out.

Fei worked.

Lili went to the VIU pub with friends and said it just wasn't the same without the big group and then a few of them went to the same haunted house we took Jia and Luk to but Lili hates haunted houses.

Kai and I hid at home as he prefers.

Lastly Eric took Jia to Nanaimo to trick or treat with May but Jia doesn't eat candy or chocolate.  Except Aero bars and he traded for a bunch of those.  Haha.  Not a favorite of anyone else's and Jia will never eat more than a couple.

My kids have never done this sorting and counting thing so it's funny to us to see Jia do it at May's.  

There wasn't even a bunch of picture taking.  Jia sent me these four.

Death the Kid.

Yoshida.

Yoshida for school Death the Kid for T and T.  Only a cosplay Kid would require costume changes ;)

Jia's school is 2 hours and 20 minutes. For Halloween if they wore a costume they got to go to 7-11 and get a free slurpee.  So, not a lot of school work getting done yesterday. 

Kai did wear his pizza costume at school.  He did cry but Eric reminded him he likes pizza and he said "ya, you're sure right about that Dad".  Luk wore an orange t-shirt with a carved pumpkin face on it.  

We leave on our road trip in a week.

Eric has the car and trailer in top condition and ready to go.  The Commander has never felt so much love.  The parenting challenges are a bit too high these days so as excited as we are to be escaping it also feels like it's not a great time to leave. 

Halloween Parade

 

Drivers meeting.  My first ;)

So funny thing.  We arrived.  Parked.  Eric took off immediately to chat.  I was struggling to attach the wings and there was a couple women at the Jeep very excitedly telling me "oh my gawd, I heard about this Jeep with the dragon scales!".  Haha.  Local Jeep famous?  Mom and Lili were as surprised as I was.  I'm guessing Shannon talked to her at the trunk or treat show the day before.  Hillarious none the less.

People were loving the eyes and touching.  Massive NO NO at any car show.  Now one lense is lifting.  Arg.  We don't have a solution/fix yet.  Aside from the touching part it was fun.  We met some other 642 Jeep peeps.  There were 7 Jeeps representing.  We even managed to get 6 of us in the parade together.  Lots of folks showed up, very festive.

If we go next year I'll stick closer to Onyx and smack the touching hands.  Yeesh.

Photo from Light em up TV.

Photo from Light em up TV.

Motorcross Day

 

They left at 6:30am and home at 1:30am.  Phew. Such a long day.

Sounds like they had a good time overall.  Some boring parts of the day.  Comical moments on the Hullo.  Good food was found. Including a feast at the bakery in Chinatown that we visited a while back. The enjoyed the World Championship event.  Eric clocked 28000 steps for the day.  Luk managed.  

Picture takers they are not.  Haha.  This was all that they sent me.

Fake an injury day.

 

Kai's class is doing a theme week.  Today was fake an injury day.

Kai did NOT want to do this.  He doesn't like Halloween or pretend play in general.  We went through a bunch of options.  He agreed to a pretend snake bite that was bandaged.  This morning Eric doctored him up.  By the time I saw him he was silent, sullen, sulky and refusing to talk.  Hmmm.  Then Eric reported that as soon as he got to school he wanted the bandage off.  Eric asked him to keep it on to show everyone and he could remove it later.  Then he tried again because he showed one other person and it was later by a minute.

Eyes!!!!!!

 

Eric applied her eyes today!

She's alive.

I'm in love.  I like it even more than I was anticipating.

I was deep in the details at wireless wave upgrading phones today when this picture came it.  I squealed out loud and then like the total freak I am, I promptly showed our sales guy.  Who took a long look and declared it pretty cool.  Yep.

Angle shot to show eyes and scales at the same time.

Eric had turned her around so I'd see her as soon as we came in the driveway.

Luk got a nice upgrade.  He's thrilled.  His plan moved to include data. He was easy, I called and asked if he cared which phone I picked.  He did not.  

We're with Bell and our new plans have 250 data and unlimited phone and text to Canada, USA and Mexico.  Eric and the kids have never had this before so it's pretty exciting overall.  Luk has always had to use wifi, he's 13 so it was time to add data.  Now, Kai could also use data but we don't want him to have the phone part.  So we're still trying to figure things out for him.

Jia also upgraded his phone.  I suspect getting a picture is unlikely.  He moved to Apple and I wasn't paying for the phone part so he agreed to paying monthly for his phone.  I added an otterbox cover and wireless ear buds as his Birthday gift.  A couple months early.  So two kids are happy today.

Lili and Fei are still ruminating but Lili is narrowing in, picked her phone out but not the plan quite yet.

Phone plans are confusing.

Eric and I stupidly leased our phones two years ago.  They have to be turned in now.  What a pain.  Eric wants a bigger phone, mine gets pretty warm so was happy to switch. Turning in the lease means you don't have the old phone home with you while you adjust and get everything working. Already tonight I've come up to a few things that need to be reset, signed into and password issues like crazy.  It's just too hard to remember all of the details.  It took hours today for three phone upgrades.

We're heading back Tues to do Eric, Lili and Mom.  Phew.  

Lili and I went to see this movie today.  I can't say enough good things about it.  Wow.  As an adoptive Mom this movie was perfect for me.  I ugly cried in the theater a few times.  

Scales!!

 

In all her glory.

I love it.

The color is more orange/red than I was expecting.  I was hoping for a better match to the Rubicon red but I'm ok with this color.  

We need to get the fenders back to black.

We went to a Halloween event, we walked their lame spooky forest and then skipped the haunted school basement. 

Then we went to Ping's for dinner but they no longer have dining after four, take out only.  Eric took Jia and Luk into a haunted house near Ping's.  The line up looked tiny but they waited over an hour.  They reported it was well done and definitely scary.  Kai and I were waiting in the car and very bored.  

We went straight home after and Eric made us some mac and cheese.  Then Dawn-Marie and Al came for an evening visit which was nice.

Someone was in a bit of a sulk because I wasn't sitting in my usual position while we had company.  

The rain has started.  Fingers crossed the wind holds off so Eric and Luk can do their motorcross event tomorrow.