Halloween, quail & a nice walk

I feel like it's been forever since I last posted, or had a chance to catch up with everyone else's blogs.  It's been so cold here and has rained so much over this last week that it's hard not to fall into kind of a slump where you fall into a depression and want to do nothing but lie on the couch under a blanket. That's not practical is it?  So you bootstrap yourself up and proceed on.

The whole wide world has looked like this. Plus damn cold.

So... last weekend was a Halloween here but it was 40 degrees and raining so we were forced to pass.  It was sad.  Luckily the next day there was a party at a community center where my sister lives.  There are local businesses that set up booths along with some "mighty machines" (fire truck, school bus, recycling truck) and the kiddos trick or treat from station to station.  There was a bus handing out pumpkins and squash.  It was really nice and everyone had a good time.

That's my little dinosaur on the right, with his cousins.  He was really proud of that costume and wore it all week.  "Mama, I wear!"  It was really fun to make too; just felt hand sewn onto a long-sleeved shirt.

Of course, dinosaurs can't help but get into trouble when unattended for all of 5 minutes.  Here he is pilling all of his possessions onto his bed while I was selfishly washing my hair.  The. Whole. Room.

Oh, what else.  Not much, honestly, it's been so yucky out.  I did move the breeding group of quail out of the quail tractor and into winter quarters in the fancied up rabbit hutch.

They're pretty happy there with some pieces of hollow logs to play on and straw to burrow under. I think they like to be up higher and see the world too.

I had a lot of help with this.

Bee caught a mouse and we watched her eat it.  "Crunchy like potato chippies".  Is that weird?  Oh, well.  Bee was enjoying her locally grown, free range, delicious dinner.  

Today was actually nice and we took a walk at Pymatuning Lake with my dad.

Awww.

On the way home we stopped at the bait shop for ice cream sandwiches, beef jerky and a full sized duck decoy for the little man to take in the bath. Man, that is a rural sentance.

So, moving forward.  Now that the cannas and dahlias have all been killed back by hard frost they can be lifted. Seeds need to be inventoried because the catalogs should start coming any day now.  And I need to call the butcher for one last chicken run.  Just some small things to wrap up the season.