Unusual Critters Abound Yesterday

 Yesterday, for the first time in the 26 years we've lived here, Ken saw a deer eating at one of our apple trees when he raised the window shade.  We had seen evidence of deer in our yard before, but had never caught a glimpse of one.  The doe headed into the trees at the edge of our property as soon as it saw Ken, who tried to grab the camera and get a picture of it, but only succeeded in getting a picture of its tail as it disappeared.  (You can barely see the tail between the 5th and 6th rails from the right.)

 Later in the day when we arrived at Todd and Betsy's house, Seth spotted this bird in the tree by their house.  We looked it up later and discovered it's a red breasted sapsucker, which we had never seen before either.

 Inside their house a couple of more unusual creatures were found, a cunning fox and an elephant that told the fox clues of where to find some treasures.

Another Sign of Fall

This is the trampoline in our neighbors yard covered in the leaves from the trees around it.  Don't you wish you had something to catch leaves on, too?

Signs of Fall

 Who needs to go looking for colorful leaves, when we have these in our front yard!

 We also discovered several bunches of mushrooms growing in our fern garden...

 ...when Ken was doing some winterizing of the garden a couple of weeks ago.

I think they're so cute and I couldn't believe how many there were.

Halloween 2013

 Kari needed to go to Canada for awhile on Halloween, so we agreed to pick up Saben & Annika from school and take them to Fairhaven, a small town by Bellingham, to trick or treat at the stores.  Ken got the job of painting Annika's nose and whiskers.

 Ready to go, Annika as a cat and Saben as Boba Fett from Star Wars.

 Getting candy from some guys sitting on a bench in town.

 Posing by a lamp post.

 Kari got back earlier than she thought she would and was able to join us for awhile.

 Lots of interesting costumes.  We were surprised that we didn't see many kids in minion costumes or with the "Duck Dynasty" beards!

 If you think Kari looks excited, you'd be right, she'd just scored some sangria from a friend who had a store in the area.

 We kept running into friends of the family and...

 ...from school.

 A black cat and a leopard.

The haul!  Each of the kids got around 100 pieces of candy and they were going to go out in their neighborhood after dinner to get more.