Grandkids

 Annika has been drawing some pictures and taping them onto the glass doors of her bedroom.

 She's mainly been drawing Halloween pictures, she's anxious for Halloween already and it's not even October yet!

 On the way to Saben's soccer game, she hid under her coat and played with her tablet.  I guess the picture on the screen must show up better when it's darker.

 We had trouble finding the field where Saben's team was playing, but once we got there, Saben was put into the game and he did really good.

 Meanwhile, on the side lines, Annika was hiding under a blanket and still playing with her tablet.

 Saben's team got their first win of the season, the score was 9-0!  Saben did a great job hustling after the ball when it was in his area.

 Most of the time he was a defender, but for a short time he was on the offensive.  He was so excited at the end of the game that he said that he wanted to keep playing!

 On Sunday, our church had their bi-yearly "Serve Sunday".  That means that church services are cancelled and everyone goes to different locations in the community to do service projects.  We had Saben and Annika with us and we helped at a school in Lakewood.

 Both kids worked hard at loading up trucks with the brush that others were cutting down.

 I don't know how many truckloads of brush got carted away, but there was an almost continuous stream of 4 or 5 trucks being loaded up for 2 hours.

Towards the end of the work period, Saben discovered a tree that he could climb clear to the top of.  If you click on the picture and zoom in on it, you should be able to see him in the top of the tree.  Annika is at the bottom of the tree.

Deer

 We've been seeing more evidence of deer being in our yard lately.  Ken has been spreading some dirt in some areas in order to put some grass seed down.  Saturday morning when he went out, he discovered...

deer and some other animals tracks in the dirt that he had put down.  We have also seen evidence of them eating the leaves on the apple trees and we've seen some deer droppings in the back yard.

 We have never see actual deer in our yard though, except for one other time, when the one we saw dashed away before we got a picture of it.  Sunday morning when we got up, we were surprised to see a couple of deer at the edge of our yard.

They actually stuck around for quite awhile, the buck even laid down under the apple tree

I took most of the pictures through the dinning room window, thinking that they would take off as soon as we tried to go outside.  When it was time to go to church, we opened the garage door, then drove out of the garage and down the street, while they continued to much on the apple trees and grass.  I took this one from the car after leaving the house.  They definitely weren't as skittish as I thought they would be!  (I talked to my neighbor after I posted this and found out that they saw the deer eating a bush by our front door around 11:30, while we were still gone.)

Last Night and Day of Vacation

 The last night of the cruise, they did "The Marriage Game Show" on the ship.  Our friends Jon and Jane volunteered to be a contestant because...

 ...the cruise director said that he wouldn't ask embarrassing questions (wink, wink).  Jane missed the wink, wink part and convinced Jon to do it!

 There were embarrassing questions, but getting to watch them take part, made it a lot more fun for us!

 They didn't win, but a lot of people recognized them the rest of the time we were on the ship, which luckily for them, was less than 12 hours.

 After getting off the ship on Sat. morning, we rented a car and drove to Montreal, it was a lot cheaper to fly from there even adding in the cost of the rental car and extra night at a hotel.  The flight times were better also.  We took a scenic route to Montreal, which was a road off the freeway, and we traveled along the river most of the time.  We made a couple of stops, once at a cheese factory, just after I opened a bag of Cheez-its, so we took a picture of me eating a fake cheese product in front of the cheese factory.

A little farther down the road, we stopped at a chocolate place and since we had some Hershey's chocolate with us, I had Ken take a picture of me with a lesser grade of chocolate in front of the chocolatiers shop.  We had a great trip and a lot of fun with Jon and Jane.

 One of the things the stewards do every night is make something with the towels.  I didn't take a picture of the first one and I've forgotten what it was, but the elephant,...

 ...the rabbit...

...and the monkey were all cleverly done.

City of Quebec - Part 2

 While we walked around the city of Quebec, a bike race was taking place.  A lot of people had cow bells that they rang whenever the bikers would ride by.  It seemed like some people took their kids out of school to watch it also.

This is part of the mass of bikers...

 ...and this is part of the large group of cars following the racers to help them if they ran into any problems.  I don't know how many loops they made around the city, but they would go by, then disappear for almost 20 minutes, then ride by again.  (I looked up the race after I wrote that and found out that they did 16 laps that were 8 miles each, in more than 5 hours of racing.)

 One biker had some kind of trouble with his bike right in front of us.

 After looking at the bike awhile, a guy in the car, hopped on the roof of the car and got a different bike down for the racer to ride.

The title of the race and an official car.  It was fun to watch the race as the bikers came by while we were walking around.

 Someone told us that this ramp is used during the winter to slide down on a sled of some kind.  The woman that told us about it, said that she has been afraid to try it.  (The sign seemed to indicate that you would get to going 30 miles an hour down it.)

 This is the board walk that you would slide over after you came off the ramp.  I wonder how far down it you could go!

 After we went back down the funicular, we spent some time walking around the lower part of Quebec.  I thought this was an interesting covering over some stairs leading to different levels of the lower part of the city.

 There were 2 buildings with some gorgeous murals on the side of them.

 Then there was the interesting hard hat statue!

 This is the other mural, both of them were very well done!

 This is a plaza by the second mural with a couple of pretty buildings next to it.

City of Quebec - Part 1

 We arrived in the city of Quebec around 8am and since the ship was staying overnight there, we had plenty of time to explore the city.  We started out walking through the lower part of old town...

 ...and enjoyed the beautiful buildings, but our goal was to reach...

 ...the Funicular, which would take us to the upper part of old town Quebec.

 This may look like a castle, but it has always been a hotel.

 This ornate fountain was sitting in a small park next to the hotel, pictured above.  Fancy hotel, fancy fountain!

 This pedestal of plants was outside of a church.  The whole thing was plants and flowers, from the bottom to the top, and I thought it was really cool looking.

 The next 4 pictures are of the inside of the church, some close ups of the front of the church are below.  It was a gorgeous church!

 There were lots of stained glass windows in the church, that were very pretty also.

 All the gold things made it look beautiful!

 This is a close up of what was at the top of the gold thing in the picture above.

 this picture has some nice looking buildings in it, but what I was really taking a picture of, was the sculpture of a hand.  It almost gets lost in the buildings in the background.  The hand seems to be holding a feather or a leaf, but since I couldn't read the french on the nameplate, I don't really know what it was.

 This was a cool arch over the road close to where the fort called "The Citadel" was located.

The outside wall of "The Citadel".

 This is the entrance to "The Citadel".

 This saying is on the license plates in Quebec and means, "I remember".  We were told that it means "I remember" different things to different people. For the military our guide said that it means "I remember" their fallen comrades, the French language, (the regiment at this fort is the only one in Canada that speaks French), and their heritage.

This building was an ammunition bunker and they built the walls this way to make them stronger and able to absorb the impact if there was an explosion in the building.

 This cannon was captured in Germany and was brought home as a prize.

 A view of the city from "The Citadel".

 Another part of the fort, with a ball in a tower that was used to set the clocks of all the ships in the harbor.

 Another view of the city from the fort.

 The St. Lawrence River, our cruise ship and the City of Quebec.

 This is a prison cell in "The Citadel".  Our guide said that 4-6 men were put in a cell this size with one bed and 2 blankets.

This is a stuffed replica of the mascot of the soldiers stationed here.  The goat is named "Batisse" and the current Batisse is number 12.  During the summer there is a changing of the guard ceremony that it takes part in, unfortunately, they weren't doing it when we were there.