Northern Lights?!

What a crazy night last night was!  We actually saw the Northern Lights pretty much right outside our doorstep!

It was a tad tricky trying to hold the phone steady:

Here we go - using the Night setting.  Pretty cool!!

We could actually see the red hues in the sky with the naked eye.  But the green hues were only visible through the camera lens.  Very strange!

I told Bobby that he still needs to take us to Alaska. This one doesn't really count. Ha ha!

Proof that we weren't making things up :-)

Charlie said that this was better than driving over an hour away to Lake Geneva, trying to see it then. That was just over a year ago in May, 2024. Here's the posting: Northern Lights 2024

What an awesome experience!

Snow!!

I saw this one hydrangea flower still in bloom last weekend:

I'm guessing probably not after this first snowfall!  It happened last Sunday:

It's almost icy rather than the soft fluffy stuff. Weird! It is so pretty though:

Off to work!  Thankfully roads are fine:

It's almost odd to see so many leaves still on the trees when there's snow on the ground.  The weather has definitely been weird this year: 

And it snowed again the next day.  Ha!

Definitely no golf today!  Weather is warming up though later this week.  In the mid 50s tomorrow and then, up to low 60s on Saturday.  Crazy!!  

Happy Halloween!

Another trip to the nursery to get some pumpkins for the Halloween Fest at work.  So happy that these are sponsored!

This year, I only carved 2 of the pumpkins as golf holes:

This one is my personal favorite :-)

The other 2 pumpkins, I just painted using acrylic markers. I thought this one turned out pretty well!

I had some lovely compliments from a few parents on how the event turned out.  Yay!

In the meantime, this week - I'm just reminiscing the good old times when I played in the LPGA event back in Malaysia. Now, it's just watching it on TV and enjoying a cup of hot and spicy tom yum noodles in a cup. Ha! 

Lots of leftover bananas in the fridge and so I thought it would be nice to bake banana bread - one for us and other for another family (gluten free!):

Turned out pretty yummy :-)

And for Halloween this year, I decided to use a couple of the extra gourds from work.  It was the perfect lollipop holder:

I had quite a few compliments on how clever this lollie-holder is.  Thank you internet for all these ideas!

Last but not least, here's Graham going out trick-or-treating. He came up with this costume all by himself!  He's a Demon Slayer, complete with his katana!

Charlie, on the other hand, went trick-or-treating without even dressing up. How is that even acceptable?!  Charlie said it started to hail during his trick-or-treating (he was with a friend at their neighborhood).  And the homeowners just had them take their entire bowls of candy??!

Look at all that candy from just 3 homes?!

Didn't take long for Graham to go through his candy.  I hope these boys brushed their teeth properly!

PuttView Technology

I went over to a friend's new golf studio yesterday to check out the PuttView technology.  It's pretty neat! Although I have to say - the test of 36 putts did take quite a while, and it was just a tad tricky as I couldn't really see/read the putts very well.  Not sure if perhaps it was the lighting?

In any case, the technology is still pretty amazing!

This is the practice mode where you can see the line of the putt (based on slope, if any) and also your feet alignment:

Check out this video - where you can practice pace of your putts as well:

So after going through the test putting, here's my handicap!

Looks like my putting stroke/pace is a bit slow and I have a tendency to miss left.  I guess I shouldn't argue with technology but now that I think about it, it's probably true!

More stats!!  Hmm, -1.6 strokes gained.  I had to read up some more on this terminology. So first off, I really shouldn't be in the negative range! It basically means that in a round of 18 holes, I lose 1.6 strokes on average to the field. 

I may try out some of these games next time. Looks like fun!

It will be interesting to see how my putting improves with some of the training with PuttView. I'll be sure to update with more data next time!

Boys baking

I'm not sure how this came about, but all of the sudden - the boys would just decide to bake something after dinner. On this particular night, Graham decided he wanted to bake soufflé.  And he doesn't even like to eat eggs!  And then, Charlie came into the kitchen and said he wanted to bake something as well (and really just want to beat Graham in whatever he's doing - talk about sibling rivalry!):

Their personalized aprons are a bit small now but I'm glad they are still able to wear it.  And off they go!  Graham is trying to hand-whip his egg whites to create peaks:

Charlie, in the meantime, is making some sort of recipe for a "Sad cake"? I'm not sure why it's sad but he's suppose to use Bisquick.  And for whatever reason, Bobby says that he can substitute Bisquick with just plain flour:

So anyway, by the time I figured out what was going on with Charlie's dough, we had him dump some baking powder and butter into his mixture.

In the meantime, Graham cooked his souffle on the stove.  It came out so fluffy!

And best part is that he actually tried some!  And he didn't mind it. Makes me so happy! :-)

Charlie's "sad cake" ended up not being so sad after all. It actually did rise and with a scoop of ice cream, it was pretty tasty!

Well done Graham and Charlie!  

Recent happenings

We are off to Ikea - to buy a new mattress for Charlie.  We have some guest visiting and we needed an extra mattress, and Charlie has been complaining about his.  And somehow, this shark stuffed animal ended up in the cart as well.  These boys, I tell you:

And Bobby is getting too soft to saying "no" these days??

Weird cloud formation along the horizon.  Is there a storm coming?

I know Fall is definitely coming.  Love the change in the colors!

Time to bust out those half-gloves.  And weirdly enough, I can't seem to find these anymore. Where can they be??! :-/

Having to sort through the inventory of junior golf clubs at work.  This is only at one out of the two locations. Yikes!

I don't even want to know how or why Graham is up on top of the hood of the truck.  Ha!

I did find a cheese curd waaaay under the seat in my car.  Thankfully I found it during my regular truck washing/cleaning:

OMG, raccoon by the back deck in broad daylight!  It was drinking up the water that had collected on the tarp from the previous rain:

In the meantime, I'm struggling in the kitchen with this spout from a new brand of soy milk that I purchased recently:

Are you kidding me?! This spout is obviously broken!

And speaking of broken, more time at home means more home projects.  Too many new cracks on the garage floor.  NOOoooo...!!

Other project around the house include - figuring out why the gas fireplace pilot light is not working:

There's suppose to be batteries in the receiver, but somehow not??  Wait, found it!!

Thank goodness I still had the phone number of the service guy that installed the fireplace. And he was nice enough to provide me with some direction over text messaging. Brownie points for him for sure!

Tada!!  Fireplace working again. Yay!  It's been getting cooler but we might have a slight warming trend again early next week.  Weather has been fairly warm I think in comparison to previous years.

Boys' bathroom light is still acting up:

I opened up the switch and the light fixture and everything looked fine.  I changed out the light bulb and then the flashing stopped?! But this old light bulb has been working well for months!  So weird:

And now our kitchen light just went out.  Arghh...!!

Time to decompress - I bought an all-white planter and decided to paint it:

Probably a lot more painting than I had anticipated.  Ha!

Not too shabby?

I think the plant is definitely happier in a bigger pot!

Some more painting - although this one I used acrylic markers:

The markers are suppose to dry but somehow it's still smudging.  So I may have to spray it with a layer of glaze.  I can't figure out how to do it yet, but in time - this will finally get to our neighbor!