10.31.2011

Happy Halloween

This year I have my very own Jack-O-Lantern!


She lost another tooth the other day. Thankfully I don't think any more will be coming out any time soon. 

The kids are very excited for trick or treating this evening - we have a few different places to go. I have stocked up on candy!! Last year I ran out - this year I will not. We have tons of kids in the neighborhood, so I have to buy a lot!

Have a fun and safe Halloween!!

10.24.2011

Cooking with Pumpkin

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.

10.18.2011

Dragons

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.





She just whips those things out in a jiffy and moves on to the next one. We go through an amazing amount of paper around here. Especially since she's teaching Sam how fun it is to draw different things. 

They're just too cute though. I have quite the stash of saved drawings.

10.16.2011

Sunday Funday

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.


The green ones will ripen over time. I pulled out all the ripe ones this morning and was going to cut them up and freeze them. I diced them and packed them into ~about one can size~, which is approximately 2 cups. I ended up with 13 packages. That was maybe a quarter of the tomatoes I have here. At least they aren't all ripe or I would have been in the kitchen all day instead of just this morning. 

I made some spiderwebs in our stairway that were really quick and simple and are super cute. I might have to do some more.


Here's Sam playing with their ship. Didn't you know Bumblebee rode on a ship? Yeah, neither did I....


And last, but not least one of Ella's drawings. This is a bunch of worms. There are two queen worms and other various fat and skinny worms. (Her words; not mine.)

 

10.15.2011

Bats in the Entry

Here are the bats that came to stay for Halloween....






10.13.2011

Gift Opening Videos

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* :)

 

Here's the first gift from Grandma and Grandpa.


 

Second gift - I love the way he loves it then tosses it aside for the last one! 

And last gift from great-grandma.

 I hope you enjoyed the video's. Sam's currently working on the Optimus Prime puzzle. 

10.12.2011

Happy Birthday Sam!!!

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! 



Sam with his cake.
 


Singing happy birthday to him.
 

Blowing out the candles.


He got the Transformer Bumblebee - he loves robots and Transformers!!


 Birthday card from Nana and Papa.


Lego robot from Nana and Papa.




 A little wind up robot we found at the Science Museum.



Monday evening we went out to Applebee's for his birthday dinner. They sang happy birthday and he got a yummy dessert. 

Yesterday on his birthday I blew up four balloons and had another little robot waiting for him when he came down. He went to preschool and brought little treats for all his friends. He thought it was great that his teacher knew it was his birthday. 

Birthday morning.

 
Today he is hanging around in his robot Halloween costume. Good times!!

10.09.2011

Remember Those Holes???

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!!!


These are my new apple trees!! I really wanted apple trees, so I did some research to find out what I needed. First of all we're really much more limited in MN with what types of trees we can plant. It just gets too cold during the winter. Then you need to have two different types of trees so they can cross pollinate. I found two happy trees!!



This is a Jonathan apple tree. 



And this is a McIntosh apple tree. 

Both trees are dwarf trees and should produce lots of nice apples within a couple years or so. I can't wait until I can get bushels and bushels of apples!!
 

10.04.2011

Smile!!

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. 


 

10.03.2011

Weekend Hiking

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. 
















See - I was there too!!
 












We found our treasure.













Looking for caterpillars in the parking lot before we started.