Lots of Little Things

There have been lots of little things in our house the last month. Little things that to little children mean a lot. Here are a few of them:

Lucy turned 3 years old! She got to wear her Cheetah costume all day and even into the grocery store. The very next day, she rushed up to her Daddy and said, "Daddy, Daddy, look at my legs! Look at them! I'm bigger now!!"



Emma lost her very first tooth. She was wiggling it furiously every day for at least a week. When I pulled it out, she cried and yelled that it hurt, but she was very proud. The tooth fairy has a hard time remembering to come to our house, but when Daddy helped her look in her room, he magically found a whole dollar for her very first tooth. Sometimes the tooth fairy has had to leave notes of apology and explanation for failing to appear. Apparently, the Tooth Fairy Company can sometimes get understaffed and overwhelmed and they are very sorry for any inconvenience.





Well, by the time we remembered to get pumpkins for carving, everyone was all out. But we still did our caramel apples and dipped them in chocolate, to boot. Here is a picture of some very happy chocolate faces!



And here is a picture of our sweet little Halloween gang:



One funny story--My husband asked my son, Ethan, if he remembered to change his alarm clock due to daylight savings time. Ethan said he didn't want to do that since he would just have to change it again the next day. "Why would you do that?" my husband asked. "Well, isn't it for just one day?" Ethan answered. So Brady explained that it was for another six months. "Oh," Ethan replied. Then he thought for a minute and asked,"Do people who aren't members of the church do it, too?" We think that he thought that because they are always announcing and reminding us about it at church and it always starts on a Sunday. So there you go--Daylight Savings Time is just for Mormons and just for a day!

As for me and my shenanigans, my friend Tracy and I transformed 6 bushels of apples into canned applesauce, apple pie filling and frozen apple pies. I just baked one of the pies today and it was quite yummy. You make the pie just like normal, but instead of baking it, you put it in a gallon bag and place it in the freezer. Then when you want a fresh baked pie, you just pop it into a hot oven straight from the freezer and you have pie heaven. We each have a dozen pies in our freezer! That was a lot of pie crusts, my friend!

Catching Up

Earlier this week, after a day of botched peach jam, kids with diarrhea and a husband out of town, I plopped down on my bed with a pan of Rice Krispie Treats and the remote control to see what was happening in the world of Bravo Reality TV. Then I started thinking that I'm not keeping up with this blog like I want to. I really like it, but it can end up feeling like homework at the end of a day when I am completely exhausted. And I am completely exhausted almost every night. So I am lowering my expectations of becoming a great and powerful blogger. I am hoping that the lowered expectations will make me more relaxed about it, which in turn will actually induce me to produce more posts. I'm practicing psychology without a license here, but it's worth a shot.

So, here's a little bit of what's been happening in my life. The canning adventures have continued, yielding both grape juice and some yummy pear butter. Have you ever used a steam juicer? Those things are SO COOL! I don't have one, of course, but a huge thank you to Tracy and Heidi for letting me use theirs. It is now on my wish list. I have also been crocheting my little hats until my fingers go numb, but I am really happy about their success.

Little Lucy has been running around in a cheetah costume for weeks now. I have put my foot down about wearing it in a store, but I admit that she did walk in a church with it on. She wears it and sleeps in it until it is dirty or peed in, and then digs through the hampers when I do laundry looking for it. When she wants to wear it, she comes to me and says, very emphatically, "I hate my clothes! I HATE THEM! I want them off!" She has a hard time taking the costume off to go to the bathroom, so we've had lots of accidents, which is making me HATE the costume. Sigh. She turns 3 tomorrow and is super excited. Here is a picture of her in the costume.

Got Me Some Skills!

Well, I decided to be brave and attempt to do some canning. I have zero canning skills. I've never done it by myself, I only helped my Mom when I was a kid. And I use the term "helped" very loosely. On Wednesday, my friend Liz gave me a box of apples and I decided to do applesauce. So I borrowed my friend Tracy's Saucer and my friend Tyra's water bath canner and after scrounging up some jars from my basement, I was ready for the fun to begin. And, again, I use the term "fun" loosely. It was very satisfying, but after about 5 hours, it was no longer fun. Brady took the kids and slept outside in the camper, so it was a one man job. I had to scrub the kitchen in the middle of the night because applesauce hardens into industrial strength glue. (After 6 kids, I've had applesauce on almost every surface imaginable.) But I got everything cleaned up and I was so happy to get some new skills! Here are some pictures of the process:

Then, yesterday, I got another box of apples and decided I would do apple pie filling. Which sounds reasonable, except that I started the project 5 hours before we were supposed to leave for family pictures, thinking "I can do it! It won't take that long." HA! Famous last words. (Insert Brady's "I told you so!") So of course, I'm still slicing apples while hollering instructions to children about what clothes to wear and timing my shower while the last batch is cooking and we were all running late. I did not have time to clean anything, so I left the kitchen looking like this:

But in the end, we got some yummy apple pie filling and had a great time doing our family pictures. We always dread getting our pictures taken. It is just plain awful. Someone is always pouting, someone is always crying, Mommy is always frazzled and Daddy is always mad. But this year, we had our neighbor and friend, Tyra, take them at the university gardens and it was great! The kids liked being outdoors and picking where they wanted their shots. We had to hurry because it was overcast and we were losing light, but we were still able to get a lot of fun shots in. I'm really excited to see how they turn out, especially the individual shots of the kids. We also took some pictures up by the Rexburg temple. In a quiet moment, I looked at all of these people around me, all happy and dressed in matching brown and cream, and realized that they were all mine. And I loved them all and they loved me. I thought my heart was going to swell out of my chest with contentment. It was a fleeting personal moment, but I hang on to those. That's the stuff that moms cling to when we wonder "Why am I doing this again?" So a big thank you to Tyra and also to all my friends who let me borrow and mooch for my canning education. I finally got me some canning skills!