Last few months in recap

Since I've been doing everything on my phone lately, I really am never on the computer to update my blog. As a result I got rather behind in the few interesting things I've done in the last few months. So lets start in August.

The big things in August was going to the fair at the end of the month. I took Pat, Della, and Marina along with me, who had never been to the fair before, and truly were not that enthusiastic to start. The attraction that got me, and as a result them, to the fair this year was a jousting show. They had four knights who did a few contests on horseback before moving on to the jousting tournament including jousting and sword-fighting. They put on a pretty entertaining show. We each picked up some wooden weapons before the show. Then after we tried out the ax throwing were I won a little flag and Patrick managed to win a wooden dagger. Marina was more into the archery than the ax throwing. Once everyone had a weapon in hand they weren't as bothered by the fact I dragged them to the fair with me. Patrick likes to ask "Isn't there a boy your age you can take with you for this?" anytime I drag him along to such tortures like fairs and kayaking.
Also at the fair was a mechanical bull, which I took a few turns on. I found myself sore the next day from trying to hold on, but I got an eight second ride in, so I was happy.
At the end of the month Della, Pat and I hit the drive-in for Captain America and Winnie-the-Pooh. Pat played his game-boy in the car the whole time. Another of those tortuous activities with his older sister.
The activity in August that did not involve my siblings was a church camp-out, which I found disappointing as the camp site was very near a dairy farm and nowhere near a forest. Which leads to Septembers highlight,

Camping (I would add pictures but after waiting over an hour for a few to load I lost patience)
I really wanted to do a camping trip before the summer was ended, and I had a 9 day break from work that needed something epic to fill it. I really wanted to do a four day rafting/camping trip in Oregon, but there weren't enough people signed up. So I decided a camping trip to Glacier National Park in Montana with just a short rafting trip involved. Marina wasn't in school yet so she came along. It was only a few day trip, but it was fun. Day one was spent driving up to Kalispell, Montana. I was not particularly thrilled to see the sign "winding road next 99 miles". There was a lot of winding and ups and downs. My car complained somewhat about all the hills. It was a very pretty drive but I was very happy to get to the hotel. We would have camped the first night but it was quite late and setting up then taking down again in the morning seemed to ambitious.
Day two we entered Glacier National Park and went rafting. By September the water level is down enough to make the class four rapids down to a class two, so a very mild trip. We ended up in a raft with the 45 + crowd, including a man normally wheelchair bound. I thought, "oh great, most boring rafting trip ever." However, we had a crazy Argentine guide who didn't seem to mind the age average or the fact that one man couldn't paddle and had a high risk of falling out of the raft. He said that, "with me, this is a class three river." He would take the boat down the rapid sideways, bounce off of rocks, and have us lean the wrong way to make things more interesting. He also surfed one of the rapids, which is hard to do in a raft, by having Marina and I kneel in the front of the raft and paddle from there to change the weight a little. He called it the "glacial facial", and it certainly was. Marina and I were soaked, repeatedly, by freezing water. It was great. I should have been smart and handed my camera to the fellow who wasn't doing any paddling, but didn't think of it at the time. It turned out to be a fun trip, even without big rapids. Afterwards we drove the "Going to the Sun Road" to the other side of the park and camped there. My camp stove didn't work, which messed up my dinner plans, but I had brought food that didn't have to be heated in case that happened.
Day two we drove back to the other side of the park for another trip down the river. This time we took kayaks. We were going to take a tandem kayak but they loaded singles instead, which worked just fine. It was a colder day, and the kayaks let plenty of water in. Despite wet suits and splash tops and pants I was very cold by the end. It was an 8 mile float/paddle, and it did take a lot of paddling to keep moving. I was quite tired after two days on the river, but it was fun to do the kayak run without trouble with no instruction. The raft guides didn't provide any guidance other than "stay between the rafts". I usually got to play the leader for the other couple who were kayaking with us, but Marina also ended up leading too. There were no surfing attempts for me, because I had no desire to swim in that river. We camped closer to the west glacier entrance that night, as two drives along the "Going to the Sun road" were plenty. The rest of my cooking plans involved a campfire, which was much easier to light than the camp stove had been.
Day Three was a little hiking and packing the car to prepare for leaving the next day. Cooking and cleaning up after cooking takes up a lot of time, so it cut down what we could have done considerably. I wanted to do a trail ride, but Marina wasn't into it. Next year maybe I can do the trail ride/rafting combo earlier in the year.
Day Four was back to those winding roads. We altered the route a little, but still got all the twists. We ended up back in time to catch the end of the Party at grandma's for Luke, who was there visiting. Everyone had retired outside to the campfire by the time we arrived, which was probably best timing wise since we hadn't showered in four days. I doubt anyone would have wanted to be inside with us.

October
In October I had made sure to get my birthday off, and since Patrick's is ride before mine I asked off all the days in between. That left me another break to fill which I spent going to New Orleans to visit Ryan, Peyton, and Portia. Ryan was working, but really the goal was to see Portia, so that was okay. We got to hit the aquarium and the park together. I love how when she's excited her mouth is always wide open. She's got a great "I'm excited" face and an even better "I'm excited and this is awesome!!!!" face. She's quite sweet when she isn't cranky. Peyton can handle her crankiness quite well though. I guess it's because she had all that practice with Ryan. Ha ha. Ryan, Peyton and I also did a ghost and vampire tour in the french quarter hearing about the reportedly haunted places. The next day, my last day, we did a graveyard and voodoo tour. The graveyard tour was actually really interesting, but the voodoo portion was just weird. The voodoo priestess had inhaled way too much incense in my opinion, though I'm quite sure it was more than incense. I flew back on my birthday and hit Texas Roadhouse with Veralyn after making it back to Boise. The next day I had dinner with Oma and Tante Marianne, who was in town.

November
Really all that has happened in November is Thanksgiving. I spent Thursday at home with Veralyn, Dell, and Adam over. I made lunch and they supplied dessert. Then we spent the day playing games. Adam loved playing blocks, and got quite into bowling with my plastic bowling pin set. He's pretty into anything that involves knocking things over, and loves it when you say "boom". Friday we were out at grandma's. My highlight then was playing "Mad Gab" with Marina, mom, Aunt Linda, grandma, and Uncle Mark. We pulled Uncle Allen and dad into it too. Mom, Linda, and Grandma had to keep passing grandmas reading glasses so they could see the answers, which was pretty funny in itself. Allen had his moment when I was trying to get Mark and Grandma to figure out "what a bunch of nonsense", he called it out from the other side of the living room in a way that made the other team wonder, "was that the answer, or was he just making a comment?". He also got the next one, "my car is in the shop". When Mark was trying to sound it out Aunt Linda figured it out quickly and called out "yes it is!". It was a fun game.

That covers everything that I've missed, so now you and the blog are up to date on my life.