Geocaching Along the Canal

On Sunday, we went geocaching. It was super fun, including a crazy drive up a ditch riders road, watching Benji zoom around, and picking through the ruins of a burned house. Dad told the story of when he came up here with his sister and they set off a smoke bomb under a large tree with a beehive. The bees began to get angry, so Dad and his sister began to run to the motorcycle of Dad's. To their surprise, a badger was sniffing at the motorcycle. Dad and his sister were throwing rocks at it, trying to get away from the bees. Funny; the tree is still there, completely hollowed out and blackened. And it is still growing!
The first geocache was Camille found after a short walk along the canal. It was hidden in some rocks, but less than one minute to find. It was gross; one of the prizes inside were some false teeth. Imagine picking those up from a geocache, uggh!
The second geocache was hard, but one of the most fun. It was just up the street from Grandma's, hidden among the only standing posts of a house that burned down long ago. We looked and looked, nearly completely stumped. The hint was NE post on the NE side. The North East post didn't have anything different, only nails sticking out on every side.
Dad finally figured out that you're supposed to pull out one of the nails and the geocache falls out of a hollowed out knot. It was tiny, like the size of my pinkie finger. Best cache ever!

Halloween

Halloween with Grandma and the Scheffels was very fun. Passing out apple cider and candy is my new favorite part of Halloween. We had kids hear about our cider from the other side of the neighborhood. They sadly didn't get there until we had already finished.
Here are some cute pictures of us kids; I was a cowgirl (how many times have I been a cowgirl?), Camille was an Indian, Hailey worked at Starbucks, and Hilary was a hippie:

Regency Ball, 2013

The ball was awesome! It was really long; we danced for four hours!
Here are some pictures from that:

Bogus Basin

Here are some pictures from our hike at Bogus Basin; it's kind of funny, because Bogus Basin is generally known as a place to ski in the winter, but it was absolutely beautiful in the fall.

 Camille, sitting on her 'nature rock' with her 'nature stick.'

It was quite funny; the hike down was easy and really fun. The way back? Not so much. Idaho is comprised of hills. So we zig-zagged down the hill, but zig-zagging up takes three times as long.

Applesauce!!!!

Sadly, we did not make it to the orchard this year. sniff.
But, Mom did contact a lady that had loads of apples for sale. Rather imperfect apples, but still good apples for canning. So Mom bought a hundred pounds for applesauce.
This is our third year making applesauce and we have a pretty good process down. One person cranks the peeler corer slicer, one person cuts the rings into slices, and one person (always my mom) throws all the sugar and spices into the pot and makes sure the stuff gets cooked down far enough. Mom also did all the actual canning, while Camille and I really only helped with the preparation of the apples, which is a lot of it.
 The apple peeler corer slicer tool really is the handiest thing to have around. I would never, ever, ever, recommend canning without one.

All of us hard at work; in all, we made 6 gallons of applesauce! And not just any applesauce; our applesauce is more like apple pie filling!