In spite of illness, the Nies girls got to dress up and step out—Elsa, Anna, and the Boulder. (Notice how the Boulder is capable of levitating.)

(Halloween returns have not yet come in from the Janowiec side of things, and will be posted separately.)

Here in Whitewater it was homecoming, replete with crowds and noise. We decided to get out of town and go for a hike at Bald Knob (part of the Kettle Moraine State Forest) , but when we got there we found the parking lot full, which proves two things: 1) beautiful fall days in the Kettle Moraine bring people out, and 2) not everyone goes to football games. (Of course UWW won as it always does.)

So, instead, we went for a 45 minute walk in the UW Whitewater praire and woodland, where we didn't meet a soul apart from local woodland residents and Pax had a wonderful romp. Of course, the sense of walking in the wilderness was diminsined somewhat by the sound of halftime festivities blasting over the stadium's lound speakers less than a mile away.

After the walk it was beets, as one might imagine. The diminished Whitewater garden production was supplemented by a peck or two from Ab's farmer friend, but we still ended up with just 7 quarts and 5 pints, which is down somewhat from our typical annual production. Blame it on these goofy weeds.

So, after beets and before dinner we were sitting out on the back patio hoping for a little peace and quiet when what shows up but a robin. A highly vocal robin, sitting in the balsam and letting all hell break loose. This guy was loud, using every possible robin vocaliztion—almost painful to our ears. After about 15 minutes of this we heard some sort of answering robin call far off to our south. For a while it seemed to be coming closer, and our vocalist redoubled his efforts. But then the answering call seemed to get lost and wander away.

By now we were rooting for the loudmouth and were sad to see his mighty efforts come for naught. But as we were about to go inside we noticed what looked like a robin in Vi's big maple, and that's when the music stopped.