Asthon's Harvest

Neither Ashton nor I proclaim to be great farmers, but it started to look like the pomegranates were ready to harvest.  Many were splitting open and they were looking red and ripe-like to us.  After tasting the sweet little pods of juice, we figured they probably weren't going to get much better! So the two of us spent some time pulling our large crop of fruits off the trees. I'm sure we had well over a hundred after all was said and done!  This year, rather than trying to juice and create anything with them, we selflessly shared them with friends and neighbors! (Also keeping some for snacking on!)

 After Nathan returned from school that day, he helped to bag and staple three to five pomegranates to each brown bag.  Then we stapled all the bags shut.  We had just over 30 little paper sacks of fruits to give.

A few days later, Ashton must've been in the harvesting mood, because Nathan came up the stairs warning me that Ashton had 'done something really bad.'  It turned out that he had whacked all of the little pears off of the pear tree.  We gathered them up and are working on getting them ripened up!

Aunt Brooke

Early October we had a visit from Aunt Brooke who was able to stay for a whole week!

The little boys and I prepared for her arrival by making an "airport sign" for her so when she got off the shuttle from Las Vegas, she'd be able to find us.  It was a little slow in pulling in because the driver had been very kind and waited for Brooke to get aboard! 

While we had Brooke we did plenty of shopping at the mall and at the car lots.  The boys favorite part was when they went to the  Halloween Store to get there Costumes for the year.  We'll have a little Ninja and a Batman this week!

We hit Kneaders for lunch one day.  The sandwiches were tasty, but the caramel apple was divine!

Brooke was very helpful with NQ's lucky listener Spanish passage for the week!  It was a tough one with works like Fanfarraneo! 

We went on walks, had nice visits, and some nice relaxing.

We saw Uncle Ed and Aunt Mindy twice!  Once for dinner at the Brick Oven (and visits after) and then took a drive up to their cabin to see the leaves and check out Pine Valley.  Ashton nearly tossed his cookies on the way home, but kept it under control. Whew!

Brooke and I ended the week at the very fantastic Depeche Mode concert in Vegas.  We played on the strip, doing lunch at the Paris cafe, doing shop shopping at the venetian and then gearing up for the concert back at the Palms. 

The concert was great!  The audience was generous and the band boys were loving their performance with smiles all around.

(I will have to post pictures when I get a hold of Brooke's phone at Thanksgiving. I can't seem to get the pictures Brooke sent me from the message section of my phone to the gallery section...)