Light the Night!

We had a very successful festival tonight at our church.  We had games, crafts, food, contests, candy, prizes,  music... all set up for the neighborhood children.  It was a wonderful way to spend the evening and such a blessing to all involved.

Jacob's Ladder bean bag toss game.

Pie eating contest (ok, so they were actually Twinkies).

This has absolutely nothing to do with the Light the Night Festival, but I thought it was the only appropriate day in which I could post a photo of a Black Widow on my blog!  We found her last week hanging onto the INSIDE of our screen door!  My husband claims it is the biggest BW he's ever seen (and he's been around some nasty spiders from around the world).  I won't go into the noise that I made when I noticed her as I passed through the front door.  We'll just leave that up to your imaginations.  But go easy on me, alright?

Flowers and Froggy Fog

I planted bulbs and tubers today.  I had to plant them all in gopher proof beds because those little rascals get everything here!

The previous tenant left an old tub.  Kind of cool!  Perfect for my Tulips!

I'm hoping these Irises actually make it.  I dug them up from my mom's house about 10 days ago.  I guess we'll soon see!

I've been doing a lot of research on flowers that are more gopher tolerant.  I think I'll have to do a post on them because I never found a site that would just show you a photo of the flower beside the name.  I'm not all that knowledgeable on plants so matching up a name to an image was very difficult for me. I had to keep going back and forth between websites and Google Images.  That was a little annoying.  But I digress.

I planted Irises and Tulips and Amaryllis.  The amaryllis (Naked Ladies) are actually one of the top plants that gophers don't like to eat so I ended up planting them along the fence rather than in a planter.  We'll see how that goes once things start blooming next year!

I was about to start painting the console table that my hubby is helping me fix up but the fog started rolling in.  Luckily my daughter has an internal fog horn because I had just begun to paint when she started yelling, "Mama, it's getting froggy!  Mama, the frog is coming!"

Boy was she right!

I thought I could beat it but there was no way.

Oh well, it sure is beautiful!

Uesugi Farms

Fall is definitely underway.  We took the girls (my daughter and my nieces) to Uesugi Farms in Morgan Hill on Saturday.  It's become a tradition of ours and we always have a great time.  

This is one of the views from the hayride tour.

There are just rows and rows of these beautiful marigolds! 

 It's really quite breathtaking in person!

Of course there are a ton of sunflowers in every breed.

The girls had to ham it up and do a little dancing on the stage.

We can't forget the pumpkin patch!  Every year the girls love to play in the pumpkins.  

It's so cool!  Pumpkins as far as the eye can see!  I'm sure that from their 3 year old minds there must be zillions of them!

They create this huge pyramid of pumpkins that is just plain neat.

This trip is always one of the highlights of this season.  

An Autumn Sky

Today's sky left me awestruck. 

Wow.  How can you look at this sky and not see God?!?

I'm baa-aack!... Well, Sort of.

Big news in the Castillo household.  We are moving out of my mom's house so that she can SELL it... not because the mean, selfish banks are taking it!  She actually gets to sell it!  Thanks to our friend (Pastor's Wife/Real Estate Agent), Anabel, we're getting the ball rolling so that we can get her house on the market!  It's such an answer to prayers and we're so amazed and in awe of God's grace.  

In the meantime, we're moving into a little cottage!  When I say little, I actually mean TINY.  But ya know what?  It's exactly what we need right now!  God is so good and is so attentive to what our little family needs at this time.  

We're thrilled to be paying a very small amount (by California's terms) and our landlords are awesome too!  My hubby was visiting his dad and step-mom when they started talking about the small place behind them recently having become vacant.  My father-in-law had been a step ahead of us and went and asked the details on the place.  Turns out it wasn't a studio after all and that they were willing to have a small family live in it.  

We were peeking in the windows (as all red blooded Americans do, right?) when the landlord pulled up in his vehicle!  Turns out he was expecting us today and saw us.  So we were able to check the place out and talk to him about the fine print.  We decided to go home and pray and sleep on it.  

The next day we put down the deposit and decided to ask about possibly changing out the flooring which was in dire need of change.  It was old and smelled pretty badly.  See what I mean!

Luckily they were totally cool with us tearing up the carpet because it was pretty filthy underneath.

 We tore it out and cleaned it up a bit and then my husband laid some self leveling cement because there was a 1.5" downward slope towards one of the walls.

Look in the left corner of the room and you will find the Acacia laminate flooring that will be laid tomorrow while I'm at work!  Hip hip hooray!

 We really do feel so blessed by what God is doing in our lives.  We were hoping to go ahead and buy a small fixer upper but we feel no disappointment in where God is placing us.  We're directly behind my in-laws and we'll be able to hang out all the time!  There's a lot of land for my daughter to play and we have a gorgeous view!

There's a lot to do but this place has so much potential to be adorable.

I'm already envisioning the quaint English garden that will be slowly taking shape.

We have two walnut trees!

We're hoping to put in a swing here!

So that's what's going on right now.  I'll be posting photos of the transition and thinking up a cute little cottage name!!!