Halloween

One nice thing about our Halloween plans each year is that we don't have to plan.  We head out with the same friends every year, just as we have since 2004.  That's good stuff.  Good memories.

Annie loves to dress and decorate for holidays.  She and Lauren had their "during the day" Halloween clothes laying out before they went to bed on October 30.  

I'm definitely the kind of mom who encourages my kids to raid the dress up bin an hour before trick-or-treating starts (rather than planning elaborate costumes weeks in advance... and since I don't sew or knit, I certainly don't make their costumes).  The kids did pretty well coming up with costumes this year.  We had two cowboys.

Two little Ingalls girls.  Having a mother-in-law who makes beautiful costumes for my kids helps a lot with Halloween costume planning.

And Jakin was a Viking

Aidan wasn't quite sure what was going on, but he got to ride on Daddy's shoulders and people gave him candy every once in a while, so he was happy.

Lauren with her good buddy, Nate.  Lauren RAN for the first half of the night.  Seeing her run and run from house to house with that cute little costume on was the highlight of the night for me.

Eating candy after trick-or-treating

Another part of the Halloween tradition that my kids love is the opportunity to dump all of their candy on to the floor at the end of the night.  After sorting comes trading!  While the big boys and the girls went off to trade with their friends, Lauren stayed on the porch to trade with Pete.  He and his wife had dressed up as bacon and eggs.  Pete reasoned that since he was dressed up, he could take a bag and trick-or-treat right along with the kids.  Much to his wife's mortification, Pete came home with a whole bag of candy and he and Lauren worked some deals in the Halloween after party.

My new obsession

Green smoothies!

I am, perhaps, a little behind on this trend, but better late than never, I say.  Seriously, I love these things.  I don't drink these smoothies out of an sense of obligation.   They taste good.  Milk, yogurt, peanut butter, banana, and spinach.  Peanut butter and spinach!!??  Don't knock it till you try it.  And Aidan will suck these smoothies down, which is nice.  The other kids showed some initial enthusiasm, which has unfortunately cooled off.  But Lauren will still drink some, so she gets a little bit of green in her. 

Anyway, here's what I do:  It's spinach season again at the farm, so I've been taking advantage and bringing home huge bags.  I clean the spinach, remove the ribs, and liquify the leaves in the food processor.  Then, I fill these reusable, flexible muffin cups with the liquid spinach and freeze them over night.

 When I make the smoothies, I use a cup of milk, a half cup of plain yogurt, a frozen banana, a tablespoon of peanut butter, and then fill the rest of the blender with spinach (when I have fresh).

 Green goodness

When the spinach freezes, I can just pop it out of the muffin cups and into a freezer bag.   I'm freezing a bunch of these every week while I have an abundance of spinach.  I'm filling up my freezer with these little cups.  Making smoothies will be even easier when I can grab one little "muffin" from the freezer and throw it in the blender with everything else.

 These freezer bags make me happy!

Girls

Just some pictures to see what the girls have been up to lately...

I recently spent a whole day (it's a big job!) switching over all of the kids' clothes from summer to winter clothes.  In the transition, the girls found matching winter jammies.  They get all silly and cuddly with each other when they wear their matching clothes.  Annie and Lauren are also warming their feet by the stove in this picture.

 Lauren likes very much to sit with the big kids when they do school.  She has been enjoying doing puzzles during that time lately.  We have a few 50-60 piece puzzles that were very difficult for Lauren at first.  Now, after voluntary daily practice, she is very good at the bigger puzzles and can complete them by herself.

 Success! 

Annie started piano lessons a few weeks ago

 Lauren is constantly asking if she can hold Aidan and I am constantly trying to tell her that he's not a baby anymore.  He wants to play with her, not sit on her lap like he did when he was a baby.  But, he did sit on her lap one day recently when she was offering to read him a book.

For the first time, Lauren completed one of these magnetic mosiacs by herself.

Celebrating little things

 September!  Cool nights, warm sunny days.  We are loving it.  Here's a couple of other things we've been enjoying recently....

A visit from Grammy and Grandpa over Labor Day weekend.  It was so fun to show them all of the new things we've done on the house since they were last here.  They brought us lots of goodies from their garden.  Nettie's salsa was just about the best salsa I've ever had.  In this picture Aidan is feeding Grandpa a chip with salsa on it.

Fall means soccer.  My once empty September calendar has quickly filled up with three separate soccer schedules.  The boys both played in a tournament over Labor Day weekend.  It was perhaps a bit more soccer than any of of us really wanted, but they were very fun games to watch.  The boys have totally different styles of play, but both are good players in their own ways.  It's such a pleasure to watch them develop.  Jakin's team won the tournament.

 Grammy and Grandpa and the kids down by the brook

Edamame!  Taking the kids each week to pick up our share at the local CSA farm is one of the highlights of my summer.  It's an almost magical place.  I love to measure the passage of time by what produce is available each week.  I love that I don't really have to do much meal "planning" at all - I just cook with what is available and in season.  One of the items our family looks forward to each year is edamame.  It started coming in last week and that was another little celebration for us. 

Playdough!  We've started up another school year and my littles like to "do school" right along with their older siblings.  While it's sometimes a challenge to keep everyone busy, it's rewarding when a day goes smoothly.

We're also celebrating pesto.  Pesto pasta is on the menu every week.  Love it.  I don't love cleaning Aidan up after he's eaten pesto pasta, but I'm glad he's eating it!

The days are getting shorter, but there's still time to make up countless games with balls in the evening before dinner.  We are blessed with a wonderful yard for kids.

 Progress in the kitchen!  Jack set the island in place just after Labor Day weekend.  His parents brought the lumber for the counter top so that's what he's been working on these last two weeks.  It's fun to see the slots for the drawers and imagine where everything is going to go.

Random pictures for August

I must not be taking very many pictures lately.  We've been doing fun stuff to close out the summer - I just haven't been taking my camera with us, I guess.  Here are a few pictures I have:

We bought a piano a few weeks ago.  "Buying a piano" has been on our list for a long time.  But, we've never seriously looked.  Buying a piano seems to assume that someone will take lessons and play it (for the record, both Jack and I had years of piano lessons.  In my dream world, I'm an accomplished pianist.  The hope to be able to sit down a play a few songs reasonably well is a little closer to reality).  Piano lessons are expensive!  When I discovered that a friend of mine would teach Annie this year, Jack and I began our search.  Even when we were drawing up plans for this house, we couldn't figure out where the piano would go.  There just isn't an obvious place.  That led Jack to consider looking for a baby grand instead of an upright.  He said that if we were going to have to place it at an angle, then we might as well get a baby grand.  To keep the story of his convincing short, I'll just say that I've learned to trust him.  And he was right!  He quickly found a baby grand that was only slightly more expensive than the upright he looked at and a few days later it was sitting in our living room.  There were some You-Tube videos on "How to move a piano" and some heavy lifting involved, but I took the kids and left until the piano was all moved in.  For me, it was quite nice to come home and Poof! there's a piano!  I think it looks lovely.  And Annie is so excited to start lessons soon.

Jack and the boys have done an Adirondacks trip for the past three years with our friends, Brian and Brandi.  This year Annie and Brandi's sister, Lainey, got to go on their own little trip.  I don't think I've posted pictures of the big kid trip and I can't post pictures of Annie's trip now either because the photos are on Jack's camera.  (That's not fully true.  They are also on Picasa, but I don't know how to get them from Picasa to the blog...)  I will say that Annie had a wonderful time.  I love this little girl who somehow manages to be a little princess and a tomboy all at once.   And I love the man I married who does these amazing trips with his kids.  I love him for lots of other reasons, too.

Annie and Lauren always have little games going.  And Lauren frequently asks Annie, "Annie, will you dress me up?"  One day they did both:  dressed up and set up a nativity scene.  I'm not sure if Annie was a shepherd or Joseph.  Lauren is Mary.  Lauren's doll, Honey, got to be Baby Jesus and Annie's doll, Mary, got to be an angel.  Very sweet.

 Annie must have been a shepherd - there's her sheep.  And see the star above the angel's head? 

All of a sudden, Aidan is 15 months old!  He walks all the time and his mobility is used to take apart our house.  His favorite spot to tear apart is my pantry.  That's usually fine.  Except for picking up the bowls and canned goods a couple times a day, there's not a lot of damage he can do.  Except for the day this week when he dumped a bag of quinoa on the floor.  sigh.  He loves to play with his siblings.  He came upon his big brother the other day while Corban was playing with a Star Wars ship.  Corban made it light up and make noise and Aidan thought that was definitely the coolest thing that happened to him that day.  He has a bunch of words.  The trick is knowing which word he's trying to say when he says, "Ba" because it could be ball, bath, bite, or any number of other words.  He sleeps through the night, which is nice.  I'm still nursing him a few times a day, but that's mostly because it's convenient for me.  I'm almost confident in his ability to negotiate steps, both going up and coming back down.  We never even set up a gate.  Also nice.  He's so snuggable and sweet. 

In these pictures he's playing peek-a-boo.  He covers up his eyes, we ask, "Where's Aidan?", he uncovers his eyes and says, "Ba!"  In this case "ba" means "boo!". 

And so we've reached the end of another summer.  We said good-bye to our favorite babysitter who headed off to college this year.   We started school last Monday.  Soccer is in full swing - nine games this weekend between the two boys.  Here we go!

July

 Now that it's mid-August, I'll take a moment to look back on July!  The highlight of the month was our family beach vacation.  Here are some other tidbits. 

Jack works on our house on Saturdays.  On one of those days he had the boys help him throw these boxes together for our porch.  He used walnut flooring that was leftover from a job.  A little more stylish than the plastic tubs I had in mind.  Scroll down to see the final product.

 Before we get to the boxes, here are some cute Aidan pictures!

 Aidan dries off after his bath with his new towel from Aunt Lisa and Uncle Ed.  Look at that sweet smile!

 And back to the boxes....  the tall one is to hold bats and the like.  Most of the real estate is claimed by a vast arsenal of stick weapons.  The box can also serve as the drying rack for Jack's stinky running clothes.  hmmmmm

 This one holds balls

 Lauren dressing up in the mud room one morning

 When we were away on vacation, our chickens were naughty.  They got out of their coop all the time, giving our chicken sitter fits.  After our return, they calmed down a little, as if they suspected the game was up.  Even still, Jack and the kids had to spend some time each day rounding up chickens.  We have one chicken in particular, Fiester (appropriately named by Jakin), who gets out multiple times every. single. day.  I'm not sure what we're going to do about it.  Permanent coop with a fence over the top?  But at least we're getting eggs now, so that's compensates for the annoyance.  A little bit.

 The boys participated in our local soccer camp after the beach.  Corban was the MVP of his group!  yay!

 Another Aidan shot

 Sweet Lauren

 Visit from the Podszus family, Round 2.  I'm so so glad we were able to squeeze one more visit in with our friends on their way home to Kansas.  It's such a treat to see how much fun the kids have together. 

Lauren and Elsa

 Aidan and Asher

 Annie and Sophia - This relationship is special.  These girls don't just have fun together, they seem to really love each other.

 Lauren doesn't nap everyday anymore.  On this day, she just couldn't make it through without a little nap right on the couch.  And yes, she's dressed up like a pirate.  Maybe it was all of the looting and pillaging that wore her out.

Two more weeks of summer and I'm gearing up for school!