Fall, Beautiful Fall

Sammy says it's a bit warm and sunny for Halloween:"But at least I'm feeling festive in this bright orange scarf!"

5th Annual Leitch Halloween Party

The Heemstras attend as zombies!
(Which is an improvement over last year when we were "The Awkward New Neighbors")

Beth and Becky

Karen and I

Karen and her husband Jeriomy are the previous owners of our house!

The blood isn't as convincing when I'm smiling.



And now the latest Heemstra Household Blooper entitled:

"Krista Attempts to Burn Down the House"

It all started when Andy went to the store and purchased frozen drumsticks. I decided I should fry them with the light breading I once used for some yummy chinese-esk chicken strips, and set some vegetable oil to heat on the stove. Once the oil was nice and hot I dropped in two flour-coated drumsticks and the pan immediately erupted in smoke. "Odd" I thought to myself as I fished around in the oil with my tongs to try to pull out the chicken. However, the smoke was so thick I couldn't see the chicken and it continued to fry to a blackened crisp in the too-hot oil. Finally I was able to remove both pieces of chicken, turned down the heat on the burner and was about to grab the pan off the burner when there was a sonic boom as the pan and oil burst into flames.

At this point the fire alarm was going off, smoke was filling the house, and Samson had already run for cover in a corner in the basement. Thankfully, Andy stepped in, grabbed the pan and headed for the back door. Though Andy is a little more level headed than I am (I realized after the fact that had he not been there my first instinct upon seeing the flames would probably have been to head for the sink and use water- which is never a good idea when you're dealing with a grease/oil fire) he was still a little panicked and tripped on the last step as he headed for the door. The entire yard lit up orange as some of the oil spilled onto the cement, our back steps, our rug, and the wall in the breezeway.

Recovering from this second near-catastrophe Andy was able to deposit the inferno in the middle of the driveway away from anything that might catch on fire as well, and finally got a lid on it to douse the flames.

Needless to say the house reeked, my rug was ruined, Andy is missing about 6 inches of hair on his right arm, and we bought a fire extinguisher the next day:

Notice the new fire extinguisher Andy purchased.

Notice that he labeled it: "Dinner Suppression Device" Haha, Funny.

We'll address the fact that it is BOLTED TO MY CABINET IN THE MIDDLE OF MY KITCHEN another time.

It took Samson a couple hours to work his way out of his corner to lay at the bottom of the steps.

And another 12 to decide it was safe to stay upstairs indefinitely.
Poor Samson.

In closing, I wanted to share a couple pictures that Andy took while flying to Vancouver this week. He likes to document his flights with pretty scenery pictures and a whole lot of "cool things" his gauges in the cockpit show while he's flying. I find the scenery pictures the most interesting, I'm betting most other non-pilots will too: