This year I have my very own Jack-O-Lantern!
At the pumpkin farm a couple weeks back I bought a small pumpkin specifically for me to cook and eat. The kids thought I was crazy and they were a little sad when they saw me pull out the biggest knife I have and cut that pumpkin in half and proceed to put it in the oven. I told them their gourds were safe and that put them at ease. :)
I've had this little thought in the back of my head for a while that I should use more pumpkin when I cook/bake. It's so good for you and yummy too. I'm not talking about making a lot of pumpkin pies either - just straight pumpkin.
Last week I made pumpkin pancakes and they were so yummy!! Everyone loved them. Good I thought, there's one idea that worked. I also tried adding some pumpkin to the kids macaroni and cheese. It kind of worked. I added too much pumpkin and they weren't quite sure why they didn't like it as much, but they still ate it. Easy fix - next time not as much pumpkin.
I'm always looking for ways to try and make a dish healthier and this works for me. I need to come up with some more ways to incorporate this great food into things.
Oh, and by the way the pumpkin that I cooked in the over didn't turn out as good as I had planned. I think I'll stick to buying the canned pumpkin. I was considering putting pumpkins in the garden next year, but I don't think I will. Canned pumpkin is nice because the kind I buy doesn't have anything added to it, just pumpkin. We'll stick with that.
Oh, and we are growing gourds in the garden next year!! Ella's so excited.
In case you thought that last picture Ella made of worms was a one time thing - nope, she does it all the time. Each page has a different theme if you will and she goes through all her colors so she doesn't repeat any.
Yesterday's drawing - dragons.
Well, not really, but it rhymed.
It's going to get cold this week, so I went out to the garden and picked all the tomatoes and pulled the plants. Red and green they all came inside. They had to have weighed at least 50 pounds because I had a hard time getting them from the garden into the house.
For those of you who mailed your gifts to Sam - they all arrived today - I took video's so you could ~watch~ him!! He loves all his presents!
Opening present from Auntie Jill and Uncle Bob. *Box was totally smooshed and open upon arrival, but bounced back nicely* :)
Yesterday was Sam's 4th birthday. We've been celebrating over the past few days and he's been having a great time!
Sunday we had Nana and Papa over for some cake and presents.
Here's the cake. It was so good!! As you can see on the bottom left my finger slipped through the frosting trying to get it out of the box. Oops!
You haven't forgotten about the holes I dug a couple weeks ago have you? I sure haven't. Romeo really hasn't because he keeps falling into them. I've been a very patient girl waiting for my ~package~ to arrive and yesterday it did!!!
Ella finally lost that top tooth!! (With a little help from me.) She looks so cute. She likes to stick her tongue between her teeth when I tell her to smile.
We packed up in the car and headed about an hour away to do some hiking and geocaching yesterday. The weather was absolutely beautiful and is supposed to stay that way all week!!
It was our first time using our GPS for geocaching and it was a lot of fun. We'll be doing more of that soon. Ella was looking for (and found) some caterpillars. Sam was looking for the giant robot (because he lives in the woods) and didn't find him - maybe next time. We also saw a tiny little snake, butterflies and fish.
