Just Wondering

Can I get milk out of this thing?

Got Our Pumpkins

I can't resist pictures at this place!

FrankenPhilip

I Have a New Family

Of appliances that is.  Microwave broke and replaced early October.  Stove randomly but repeatedly turned itself off while baking for church dinner in early October.  And the fridge gave out this week.  We got a great closeout deal on the fridge but had to get stainless steel.  Guess I'll always have my kids' fingerprints on the fridge file.  In the fridge and stove's defense they had both had pretty long and happy lives.  The fridge was Jeremy's grandma's on the farm before it was ours and was about 20 years old.  The stove came from an employer of Raleen's and did not serve me well (broke twice in 6 months) but served its former family well.  The microwave, well let's just say we didn't get another Kenmore.  That's the second one we've had that has broken in less than a year and we couldn't use the warranty because we'd already done that once.  So now I'm set for 10-12 years, or so the salesman says.

Perfect Day

The weather is cold and rainy but we have nowhere to be because there's no school today.  Philip and Julia were supposed to go to the pumpkin patch with Raleen for Philip's preschool field trip but it got rescheduled because of the rain.  (Poor Julia, she was supposed to go a week ago last Friday with her class but it was too muddy so they rescheduled to last Tuesday but Julia was sick so I signed her up to go on Philip's field trip today since she didn't have school but once again no pumpkin patch for her.)  So we cleaned the bedrooms this morning which REALLY needed to be done and rewarded jobs well done with lunch at Burger King. ($12.03 for me and all 5 kids!  Good coupon.)  The kids requested chili for dinner so soon I'll have a pot simmering on the stove with cinnamon rolls in the oven because I have time.  Currently the kids are all distributed around the house having rest time.  Except Nicholas who thinks 20 minutes (10 in my lap nursing) counts as a nap.  He's crawling/walking around the house getting into things.  Like I said.  A perfect day.

Look Who Dressed Himself Today!

Shirt- backwards, temperature outside- in the 80s, matching skills- iffy, but hey, if you can do it with absolutely no help from me, I'm good!

Julia may have scored a little higher on matching at this age.  Or not...

What Nicholas has Been Up To

Kneeling to play.  

(He's liking the binki right now for teething, not for something like sleeping through the night.  Sigh.)

Look at those feet!

 Emptying out the tupperware cupboard (and the book shelf and the shoe shelf).  Every day.

 

 Playing under the stove.

This may require a little explanation.  In the midst of my Church dinner baking my oven went out.  Thank you for the opportunity to get rid of some Purgatory time Jesus.  Anyway we still had our old oven in the garage and the burners were the problem on that one so Jeremy brought it back in for me.  Thank you again Jesus, this time for real.  I didn't take the time to clean out the drawer under the stove and as I was standing at the stove (using the working burner, not the oven!) Nicholas was playing by my feet.  Then he disappeared- he was pretty happy with his little tunnel!  Don't worry Mom, I put the drawer in before I turned on the oven.

And, drumroll please,

taking some steps!
Really, who ever heard of a baby walking at eight months? (He is only a week away from nine months I guess.)  Sheesh child, will you be heading to kindergarten next year?

Closer to Picture Perfect

Our church dinner was last weekend so I tried my hand at making kolaches again.  I have to say they turned out quite pretty and tasty to boot!  I'll tell you how I did it if you PROMISE NEVER TO TELL GRANDMA, okay?   (When I say Grandma in this case I mean Jeremy's grandma- kolache making is not an art in my family line.)

A lady a church told me she rolls her dough 3/4 inch thick and then cuts them with a tin can to make the circles.  No rolling sticky little balls that are never the right size and ending up with the first one huge and the last one tiny!  You let the cut outs rise and then poke the hole, fill them and let them rise again before baking.  The sweetened condensed milk can I used made the kolaches turn out huge.  My church lady said she used a tomato paste can and they were a bit small so I'm going to look for a biscuit cutter somewhere in between.  Even though I of course washed the can out it did seem a little gross.  I also gave up on Grandma's dough recipe for the time being.  I'm pretty good at yeast dough (thanks to my mom and grandma and the cinnamon rolls that are in my family line) but Grandma Margie's recipe is really delicate and I just don't have the hang of getting it right yet.  It seriously looks and tastes like I use a different recipe than Grandma even when I haven't.  So I went with a recipe I'm good at and the tin can.  Grandma Margie's grandma (who taught her how to make kolaches) quite possibly rolled over in her grave due my methods but believe me I won't be attempting to serve my version to Jeremy's family any time soon.  However until I have time to perfect Grandma's recipe (and maybe her method?) these will do just fine.  :)

Orchard Fun

Fall has so many good yearly outings!  This year Lynn and the boys joined us for apple picking and I let Julia bring a friend too at a feeble attempt to help out the girl count.  We didn't pick as many apples this year because Grandpa Steve gave us a whole box from the tree at work but we ate plenty, played a lot and still brought home 20 pounds of apples.
As you can see the babies loved the idea of riding together in the jogging stroller.  The new corn box was really fun too.

 The hay rack ride and tire swing were big hits too.

We didn't pick pumpkins yet but we're hoping to go back.  It's so much more fun than picking them out of the crate at the grocery store!

Flag Football

So after a small blogging break (which may or may not have been caused by someone knocking a wire loose behind the computer desk when she threw the play tent back there because there's not a better place to keep it and not realizing that was the problem for two weeks) I have a lot of catching up to do.

We have all enjoyed Samuel's flag football much more this year thanks to a good coach who who knows how to use praise and remembers these are just 3rd and 4th graders in a league that doesn't keep scores. (I tried to convince Thomas that this was the year to try flag football because 3rd and 4th graders are together so he and Sam would have been on the same team, but he just wasn't interested.  Which is fine.  I just hope he doesn't suddenly become interested next year when they would have to be on different teams.)   Samuel has been playing center quite a bit.  The first game he kept spinning around real quick after he snapped to see if he got it to the quarterback okay.  After hearing Jeremy and I mentioning we should remind Samuel not to do that, Philip quite seriously told Sam, "You shouldn't turn around after you snap!"  He's such an expert.

Here he is, in the pants with the green stripe down the leg, about to snap.

What Samuel really loves though is playing on the defensive line.  (Are you impressed I know these football words?  Four boys means I have to learn.)  He came home from practice one evening and declared himself the "Defense King."  Which was reinforced a couple weeks later when he had a really good game and the coach said "I think Samuel is defensive player of the game!"  We could barely get Samuel's head inside our house after that.  It's amazing what a difference the coach makes.  Samuel has learned so much more this year and come a long way with his skills.

Way to go Defense King!