Squirrel on wheels

The leaves are a-changing and the squirrels are busier than ever, scampering around to hide the acorns from our neighbors' oak tree. Not only do we have those big reddish brown squirrels, we also have smaller black squirrels, who rather resemble minks in color but do not live in fear of becoming outerwear.

And now we also have a blue squirrel on wheels:

Meet Rocky, who joined our household on Monday. When we returned from our recent trip to Canada, I learned that I had won a contest on Ravelry. Heather (OregonGrl on Ravelry) ran a contest on her web site, little green fox, to win an adorable knitted squirrel on wheels. She knit Rocky from a pattern in Anna Hrachovec's book Knitting Mochimochi.

Rocky is just too stinkin' adorable.

Unlike the other squirrels who run around our yard, Rocky will not eat all the sunflower seeds out of the bird feeder nor taunt Lily, the Pug next door who thinks she is a Rottweiler.

Thanksgiving weekend

When we got our passports, our friends Geri and Fred, who live in the greater Toronto area (GTA), immediately asked, "When are you coming to visit?" A comparison of our schedules showed that autumn was going to be the first good opportunity and they were gracious enough to invite us for Canadian Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving in Canada occurs on the second Monday in October, the same day that Columbus Day is observed in the U.S. (Columbus Day being that day when we celebrate Columbus "discovering" a land in which people already lived - go figure). Aidan gets two days off from school so it was a perfect time to go. We kept him out of school on Friday so we could start our trip in the morning and arrive at Geri and Fred's house before the holiday traffic became too crazy.

We had a fun weekend visiting with Geri, Fred and Ollie, who just might be the nicest cat in the world:

Unlike our darling cat (imagine the sarcasm I am intending as I type those words), Ollie is very quiet and content.

On Saturday morning, Geri took me to one of her local yarn stores, Soper Creek Yarn in Bowmansville. It is a lovely little store with a very nice and helpful owner. I showed tremendous restraint and bought only a pattern, and a skein of souvenir yarn from which I will knit some fingerless mitts:

 

While Geri prepared Thanksgiving dinner, James, Aidan and I went into Toronto on Sunday to the Ontario Science Centre. There are no photos to show what a good time we had at the centre; the camera was in the pocket of the jacket that I did not wear that day. Of course.

When we returned to the house, the intoxicating aroma of roasted turkey greeted us and soon we sat down to a delicious Thanksgiving dinner:

We took advantage of gorgeous weather on Monday and headed to Pingle's Farm Market in nearby Hampton. There were pumpkins and apples to admire plus lots of fun activities, including a photo opportunity for Geri and Aidan:

 All five of us chose to wander through the corn maze, but Aidan and James entered first:

They say that they ran through the maze the first time, then entered again to find Geri, Fred and me moseying along at a slower pace. There were corn stalks as far as the eye could see:

Despite the corn stalks and my lousy, make that nonexistent, sense of directions, I think I could have found my way out of the maze. Eventually.

We drove back to the United States on Tuesday and are now looking forward to our own Thanksgiving. Two Thanksgivings in one year -excellent!