Halloween and those crazy Bears

Stacey and I asked Mara a few weeks ago what she wanted to be for Halloween. It started off being a cow, but the final and most consistent answer was a silly pumpkin. Luckily, we were able to find it and a Bumblebee costume for Ellen. Getting them to pose together proved to be futile, so we tried to get a couple solo shots:


Mara the silly pumpkin


Ellen the grumpy Bumblebee

Mara completely understood the concept of Trick or treating this year. We started off down the street with both kids in the wagon. Ellen really didn't know what was going on. She thought we were headed to the park. So when we at the intersection, when we went straight instead of turning to go to the park, she freakin' lost it. That was the end of her Trick or treating, hence the grumpy Bumblebee tag. Her and Stacey headed back with the wagon to attend to the candy bowl, while Mara and I continued soliciting more candy on foot.


Mara and I knocking on doors

All in all, Mara did a great job and had a lot of fun. She came out of her shell quite a bit that night, speaking to adults easily and politely. I was impressed. Later that night, we had to cut both the girls off from their candy intake. The sugar high was evident as numerous laps were being run around the house.

Great Grandma and Aunt Dani came by on Saturday. They all went to the park while I hung around the house. Later the big girls left me with the little girls so the big girls could go out to lunch.


Aunt Dani and the girls in the playhouse


Sunday was a great day with a painful ending for me. We didn't do much in the morning. Played outside a little, but stayed inside most of the morning. Stacey got a quick lunch of appetizers ready for the game only to find out 2 minutes before kick-off that it wasn't televised. Shit, guess we should've bought that Sunday ticket. Oh well, it was off the the garage for me. Unfortunately I'd be listening to the game on the radio without my little cheerleaders. These are outfits Aunt Sandy and Uncle G sent a while back. We finally got a chance to get them into them and take pictures. The game ended with the Bears in the W column, but it was ugly. Me being in the garage turned out to be really productive. My garage is as clean as it's been in a long time.



Mara and Ellen in their Go Bears dresses



The painful ending came with me playing around on my bike in the driveway. I built these ramps after a trip to Decorah a few weeks ago. I just finished the landing ramp yesterday. It doesn't look that tough from here, but having never really gotten into doing stunts before, the height of these ramps and degree of loft you get from the launch ramp is intimidating. What you see on the video here is a successful attempt, what you do not see is the attempt previous to this one, yes previous. On the attempt previous to this one, I had the ramps about 2 feet further apart. I hit the launch with too much speed and got all crooked in the air. Ended up overshooting the landing ramp and landed front wheel first on the concrete subsequently diging the handlebar into my ribs and my helmet into the pavement. I knew I had to get up and do another jump even if it was a small one or I'd never try it again. I filmed it because my buddies Ken, Cole, and HoJong are fired up about riding these ramps and have a lot more skill doing so than I. My ribs hurt like hell today, I don't think they're broken, but they could be cracked or at least bruised pretty bad. Too old to be doing shit like this, but I can't help it. Click the video to see it.