Annual Norquist Family Cider Bee, 2025 Edition

 

The weather was good! Dry is always good. 

The apples had been fetched from east of the mountains. Thank you, Ben and Laurie.

The clan began to gather. Coffee and yummy bakery goods were available to get us going. 

While this is the Norquist Clan, no one here has that surname any more. Since the brothers moved east, it is the sisters and their families who are maintaining the tradition.

Manning the apple presses.

Tom, Jake, Isaac, Andy, and Coral. 

Troy and Nora's boyfriend, whose name I should know but don't. :-/

Bottling the cider,

Laurie and Heidi

Drinking coffee and supervising. 

Tom

Supplying cuteness.

Cutting apples.

Laurie, Hannah, Jill, Stewart, Seila

Coral, Linda, Stewart, Kathy

Brothers. Ben and Andy

Sisters, Heidi, Nora, Hannah

Group selfie. Thanks, Katie, for many of these photos. 

Seila, Isaac, and Jill

Laurie's daughter Katie, Troy, and their family

Linda, Tom and their "kids".

Ilene's sons Stewart and Tim with some of the Grady bunch (DJ, Kathy, and Tim and Kathy's grandson.)
Laurie and her "kids".

Our hosts, Ben and Ericka. Their daughter Mia and Ilene's granddaughter Stephanie joined us later via Zoon for the cabin meeting. 

The product, lots of fresh apple cider. 

Once again we enjoyed lots of visiting and laughing and eating and some Rockaway cabin business, a legacy we all share. 

Halloween Fun

 With no young grandchildren around any more, we have pretty much let Halloween go. But I miss the fun of costumes and candy and decorations and people just enjoying themselves. 

I decided not the skip Halloween this year. Since it was on a Friday I dug my costume out of the back closet and resurrected Arachne, the Spider Witch.

This is me, Friday morning, getting ready to go to breakfast. Let me tell you about this costume.

In the summer of 2009 I found this hat at the gift shop at the Tillamook Cheese Factory, the original one before they "upgraded" to a not fun gift shop. We were there for our annual early August stay at the Rockaway cabin. I'm sure Jill and the grands were there with us. That year Isaac was six and Irene was four. I saw this hat and had to have it. 

In October we decided to go to Colorado for Halloween, where Jill and family lived in Fort Morgan. I made a cape for Irene to wear over her Cinderella costume and a pirate costume for Isaac  and I needed something for myself. The answer was this cape. We had fun with the kids!

So this year, I wore my costume to breakfast, where we passed out candy, and then to the bazaar at Wesley Gardens, where our 98 year old friend Dede lives. I wasn't sure about doing it, but Dede said the people there would love it like she did. They did! I got so many rave revues over my costume, and had fun with a few other "witches" there.  It gave me a warm, glowing feeling to make people happy.

I bought a few thigs there too, items made by the senior residents.

I couldn't pass up these wood working items, at $5 each. I bought a few other things but they have to remain secret until Christmas.

After we left the bazaar, we stopped by to visit our friend Jan who is in the health center there still recovering from a broken hip. I wore my costume and passed out more candy. Jan loved it, and on my Facebook page wrote, "You made so many people smile today!"

I was tired but happy when we finally got home. In the afternoon I paid the bills, something I usually do on Halloween. It began to rain, dampening Trick or Treat fun. We don't have sidewalks on our hilly street, and hardly any kids anymore, so we keep our lights off, but this year, in renewed Halloween spirit, I fixed treat bags for the two young boys who live in the house in front of us and delivered them at 4:00 when I went out to get the mail. I told them these are from a Grandma, just not yours. They were very excited. I was grinning. 

I celebrated Halloween!

Now it is November. Today we've had rain and wind and sunshine. This morning I did my PT exercises by bedroom windows with this view. 

This afternoon I made pumpkin muffins for the freezer, and a mac salad to take to the Norquist Family Cider Bee. Traditions live on in this family of mine, and this year, so did Halloween fun. 

 

Autumn Storms and Summer Lingerers

 Saturday morning we attended a very pleasant meeting of our garden club. Gretchen  is an expert gardener, and hosted a presentation on focus in the garden. As I arrived in her garden I focused on this!

Of course it was an inside meeting because the promised wind and rain had begun. After a light lunch and lots of visiting we drove home through glorious autumn color, dimmed only slightly by the rain on the windshield. 

I forgot to buy flowers at the store on Friday, so in a break in the rain we went out to gather what we could of the remnants of summer flowers in the garden. 

The rest of the day we were inside as the wind blew, the lights blinked, the rain poured, and I watched college football.

There was quite a mess in the morning on Sunday, but we did not lose power or have trees down like many did in the region. 

All of the clean up we had done was undone, but there is no hurry. There is more cedar to come down, and most of our leaves are just starting to color up. Fall isn't done falling yet. 

But while I was out during a break in Sunday's rain I took a few photos of the remnants of summer.

Each of the brugmansias are putting on a few more buds and blooms.

The hostas are going golden.

The wood from the tree trimming is stacked. 

And today the sun was shining so after doing the housework and laundry this morning, we got outside this afternoon for an hour to start the clean up. 

And just for fun, have you heard about the pink salamander, the Axolotl, that is all the rage in inflatable costumes that are showing up at political rallies?  Protestors do have fun.

More Trees

On Wednesday we moved our gardening to Whidbey Island, where we spent about two hours planting things in the cabin garden. I worked on planting the tulip bulbs from last year's home garden and Tom planted out the native sea thrift and oxeye daisies he had raised from seed he collected. 

By now we were wearing out, so after a late lunch and a brief rest, we packed up and went to Langley for coffee and dessert and a walk around before heading home. 

I like the broom bouquets and pumpkins in the Boy and Dog Park.

Tom liked having a place to sit.

I have noticed quite a few trees where just one branch or just one part of a tree has colored  up. One just had one branch of apples. 

This one just had  one bright red section. 

 Autumn color is everywhere here right now and it was great to be out driving around while the sun was still shining.

Back home on Thursday we slept in and then were back outside working. Tom used his electric chain saw to cut up all of the "logs" from the trees we had trimmed. I helped hold logs. When that was done, I did some of the clean up under the big fir tree while Tom moved and stacked wood.  Then I just enjoyed being outside in the garden in the late afternoon and took a few photos- of trees.

Our Full Moon Maple and Red Japanese Maple and the dogwoods are just starting to color up. There will be more to come.

You enjoyed seeing two of Tom's bonsai trees, the deciduous ones. He has recently worked on trimming and shaping two of his black pines. 

They look skimpy now, but they have been needle pruned and rewired for shaping. They should be wonderful by next summer. 

And now it is late afternoon on Friday. The rain has arrived. 

We need it. My exercise today was grocery shopping and a half hour on the stationary bike. We will now have to get used to darker, shorter days and more indoor activities. And maybe a break from hard labor. :-)