Trunk or Treat

Parades, Sculpting & Cookie Monster

-We had a lovely time at the local fall festival that our neighboring town throws every year. The kids sure love the parade and all the candy that comes with it.

-It was a sad day last week, we sold the van. We bought it last summer in the hopes of taking it on vacations and actually camping out in it. At least I was hoping we would camp out. It just never happened. I've deducted that we are not the camping type of family. My idea of a good time includes a nice hotel with a pool....not cramming four people into a van. Yes it had a pull out bed and a toilet along with a kitchenette but the only thing we used was the toilet. The kids were very sad to see it go, even giving it a kiss goodbye. I always knew its time with us was limited because it only had one captain chair in the back for the kids. Greta was secured onto the pull out couch which had lap seat belts but no shoulder strap. It worked while she was still in a harness style car seat but now that she's in a booster it was unsafe for her. Goodbye van, the idea of you will be missed. I have to admit it's nice to be down one more vehicle.

-Sean has been busy working on the Range Rover again. He drives it a couple of weeks to work and back while compiling a list of things to fix on it, then puts it in the shop for a couple of weeks and works on it. He's been doing this for a few months now in the hopes of creating a reliable snow vehicle for the upcoming winter. Now according to The Farmers Almanac you can tell how difficult a winter will be based on how many acorns pile up under oak trees. The more acorns = a rough winter. So by my deductions it will be one hellish winter. I've never seen so many acorns in my yard in the whole ten years we've been here. I hope I'm wrong. But if the Almanac is right then we should have one heck of a fun four wheel drive vehicle to use.

-I've been working on my normal sculpting in the evenings and have even begun sculpting during Greta's preschool time. It's nice to catch up on orders during the day when the house is quiet. I felt inclined to try something outside of my comfort zone the other day, a horse. It was fun and I might have to try doing some more in the near future.

-Last but not least I have to add a picture that made me chuckle. The kids really enjoy their stuffed animals. The kids are 5 and 7 years old and they have quite an array of stuffed animals that they love. One of the them is the ancient Cookie Monster that their dad grew up with. The other night Wesley declared that Cookie Monster was his wife and then dressed him up in one of Greta's dresses. He wanted a picture. So here I present Wesley with his wife (Cookie Monster in drag).

Fall Mornings

I was greeted by this lovely Fall morning when I opened up the blinds today. Fall is my favorite time of the year. I'm sure I've said it before. Spring is nice but there is so much to do. Fall is the season where I sit back in a chair with a nice cup of tea and my warm slippers and enjoy the cool weather.

Today I'm enjoying all this with two sick kids. Wesley and Greta both have a cold. Poor Wesley is full of phlegm. He had circles under his eyes this morning and I just couldn't send him to school. There is no school tomorrow so now he has four whole days to recoup.  Of course he's running around and playing with his sister and you wouldn't even know he's sick, probably should have just sent him to school.

I've been reading about all the benefits of spirulina. It's a blue green algae that is cultivated and sold in powdered form. It's full of vitamins, protein and iron. It's supposed to boost the immune system which is why I bought it. I make a green shake every day with baby spinach, a banana, ginger root and frozen berries. I've been adding a teaspoon of spirulina to it to boost it's health benefits. It's tasty! The kids even drink it! I, of course, do not tell them about the algae. Perhaps one day soon all of this will help their immune system ward off all the crud out there.

The Patch

Every year for the past five years I've posted pictures of the kids going to the pumpkin patch. Like clock work. It's a yearly outing that the preschool does. The kids love it, heck I love it. I'm kind of sad thinking that I won't be doing that with the preschool anymore. Miss Greta will be starting Kindergarten next fall. It might have to be a family outing from now on. Here are the pictures from today's trip to the pumpkin patch. Greta and I had a lovely time.

Purging

Almost every day I hear "Mom, can we please go do something?" from the youngest member of the family. She and I are home together during the week unless she's in preschool. Being home with Mom can be pretty boring. I always seem to be cleaning something or folding something or painting something and that's pretty boring stuff for a newly turned five year old. I think she counts down the hours until Wesley comes home so she has someone to play with.

Yesterday I had to opportunity to go into town for an errand and treated her to lunch at our favorite place, Panera Bread. She gets so excited to go out to lunch, it's a treat for both of us. She always orders the kids buttered noodles and I tried their new soup, Autumn Squash. It was delicious!

I've been in the fall cleaning mode for the past several weeks where I've been cleaning out closets and purging the house of unwanted items. I sold a few pairs of boots I no longer use on ebay and one pair of Frye boots sold for more than I paid for them new. Ha! Crazy people out there I tell you. I joined a local virtual garage sale on facebook and saw a few people selling car seats and decided to post the kids old Britax Marathon car seats up there by chance someone wanted them. Turns out about 40 people wanted them and I got a cool $80 out of them. Not bad for something I thought was worth nothing. Greta just moved out of her Britax this week. The height limit on that car seat was 49 inches and she's 48 inches, so it was time to say goodbye. Surprisingly she was still within the weight limits. We moved her up to a booster seat with a back (I don't think she is ready for just a booster seat). She's pretty excited about being a big girl and using a real seat belt like her brother.

Egg Victory

Farm fresh eggs are wonderful. I find great joy in collecting my own eggs every evening. Chickens are one of the few (if only) animals to pull their own weight around here. The only problem with fresh eggs is they are completely horrible when it comes to hard boiling them. You can ask anyone that has hens and they will tell you the same thing. The fresher the egg the harder to peel. Usually a large portion of the egg white comes off with the shell. It looks like this:

It's so frustrating. To the point I buy a carton of eggs from the grocery store if I plan on doing some hard boiled eggs. Pretty much defeating the purpose of having hens. I gave up on the idea of hard boiling my own fresh eggs until I ran across an article online from another gal having the same issues. She swore by a certain method and I thought "what the heck, let's try another way!" Since, you know, I've tried every other method in the book.

She said just boil a big pot of water and slowly lower the eggs into it with a slotted spoon. Cook them for 12-15 minutes and put in a cold water bath (like the normal method). So the only thing different, from the normal method, is to wait until the water is boiling to put in the eggs.

OMG! *Yes, I just wrote that!* It worked!

 I now have a way of using the hordes of eggs I have in the fridge (my kids LOVE hard boiled eggs).  It's so exciting. Anyways, just thought I'd share my victory over the eggs and perhaps pass on my new found knowledge to another frustrated hen owner.

Family

I feel bad for my kids. We don't go do much together as a family on the weekends. I'm usually cleaning or doing laundry or perhaps, on rare occasion, I've been able to go off by myself for some much needed shopping therapy. Sean likes to tinker around in the shop on one of his ongoing car projects. We tend to do our own thing on the weekends. The kids play really well by themselves and keep each other entertained for the most part. But I got to thinking how we don't do much together, as a family. So I told the Hubby that we need to try harder. Every weekend we need to do some "family together" project. Whether that's going to a park, or out to eat, maybe just a movie all together or some WiiU time.

So yesterday evening we took the kids out to eat at their favorite rib joint in town and then we went for a nice walk around the park. It was very nice and we even got Wesley to say it was "the best day ever!!" (which we hear whenever we do any extra curricular activities). Next weekend is our little towns festival and parade so that will count as our family time, then I think we need a zoo trip all together. It's been too long.

Accessorizing

I went to the store yesterday and found the perfect fashion accessory. It's a giant over sized bag in red and blue. It's got a hard plastic insert for the base and I can stuff it full of all sorts of fun things.

What do ya think? Stylin I tell you. But am I really the type of person to blog about my fashion accessories? Not so much! There has to be another reason I would get excited about an over sized bag right? You got me there.

This is what's in the bag.

I finally found a tortoise carrier that works. This is me excited. You see, I've been hauling them outside from their upstairs bedroom pen in a laundry basket for awhile now and my lower back is starting to complain. These are large tortoises that are only going to get bigger. There had to be a better solution and I found it. Yea me! So now they get transported outside into their big pen via a stylish over sized bag.

So there ya go, that's accessorizing......tortoise style.