the simple life

Autumn'ish things of the week

Autumn'ish things we did this week:

*Went to the pumpkin patch (same place as the apple orchard)  and took a hay ride around the farm.  Became a huge fan of their cider doughnuts. 

*Carved a pumpkin.  it was the kids first.  they "planted" about 8,000 pumpkin seeds. 
i'll be super excited if even one of those seeds grows us a real pumpkin.  :)

*Made a couple of loaves of pumpkin bread, and have eaten pumpkin bread with dinner, breakfast, snack, lunch, and seriously comtemplating having it for dinner again.  

*Planned our Halloween costumes  (thanks for all of the GREAT ideas!)  We've narrowed Ezra's costume down to two, and Annabelle changed her costume from a princess to a puppy.  I'm secretly excited, as this may be the last year where she won't be embarrassed to wear such a "little kid" costume

*Mapping out our "trick or treat" spree for the week.  Starting with a costume party before Julian's soccer game tomorrow night.   :)

*Had a nice campfire with our neighbors and a few of their friends last night.  Ezra wore my neighbor's cowboy hat and looked ADORABLE.  Considered switching his Halloween costume to a cowboy, because he was just so darn cute.

*Froze our toesies off at campfire.  The wind was ridiculous last night, and today's weather forecast calls for "possible snow flurries". 

*This southern girl thinks October is WAY.TOO.EARLY. to worry about "snow flurries".

*Worrying about our electric bill next month...

How about you?  How are you enjoying this lovely month? 

Andy, Opie and the Fonz!!! Can you get more American than that?? :D

See more Ron Howard videos at Funny or Die

this made me smile :)

we need some Trick or Treat ideas!

Annabelle is going to be a Princess for Halloween. (of course)
Julian is going to be a BIG spider.
Ezra doesn't know what he wants to be...right now he's just planning to be a "cute baby who screams for candy". 
Anybody have a better suggestion? 

I'm trying to be creative without breaking down and buying a $20 costume from Target, although I am pretty notorious for waiting until the 30th and buying whatever is left that will fit the kids.

What are YOU going to be for Halloween?  Your kids?

SO SO SO SO Funny!

If you've been keeping up with the election news at all, you have to watch these hilarious videos of Barack Obama and John McCain at the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Dinner; 

There are two videos, watch both of them!

onegoodmove:

Posted using ShareThis

oh, and a picture, just because it's HILARIOUS (and not photoshopped!)  A funny little confusing moment at the end of the debate last night. 

Doesn't it look like Obama just farted?  and McCain's gagging violently?  I laugh like crazy every time I look at this photo :)

 

finally: I don't know why this entire post is underlined, but I'm leaving it.  It's late and I'm going to bed.  ;)

Help for the web crawlers

according to my site meter, the three most frequent searches that lead to my blog (other than my name) are variations of the following:

1. Boots the Monkey costume, which leads you to this post about my sweet nephew Jonas, who looked like Boots at birth.  This search has been particularly high since September, I guess with all the Halloween early birds.  
So here is where you can order it.

2. many variations of "cow poop cookies", "cow plop cookies", "cow patties", etc., which leads you to this post about my sweet daughter Annabelle, thanking Jesus that her Mama gave her "sweet cow turds to eat".     
you can find the cookie recipe for "No Bake Cookies", a.k.a. "Cow Patties", here.

3.  The third, and probably most frequent search year round, is for "hangy down thing in throat", which leads to this funny post about my son Julian naming his "hangy down thingy in his throat", a "DRIP".  You know, because it looks like a big drip. 

The only information that I can give you about this is that it's proper, but icky name, is "Uvula". 

hope this helps.   :)

he's gonna be a socca playa (said in my best Adam Sandler voice)

He was nervous, and declared that he changed his mind and NEVER wants to play soccer, EVER. 
He quickly changed his mind.

It's his new favorite thing, and the hardest part was keeping Ezra off the court, and convincing Julian that it was time to leave.  I can tell that my soccer nights are going to be exhausting.

 

the kids after practice.  I bribed Ezra (during practice) with Juicy Juice, granola bars and a few smarties candies.  I can tell that this will become a habit.
look at that picture.  don't you want to gobble them?  i do.  often.

i DARE you.

My friend Kristy issued a "Me right now challenge" on her blog, and I took her up on it. 

It may have been a bad idea, as I have no make-up on after a long rainy day running from grocery store to soccer practice, and had "recliner head" as I had just woken up from a post-presidential debate nap. (doesn't everybody nap at 9pm??) 
either way, here I am right now.  although, not really right now, but more like "right then", 4 nights ago.  ;)

so now i challenge YOU.  take a picture of you RIGHT NOW.   (you do not have to make a silly face, although it is encouraged.  trust me, after taking 3 or 4 serious pictures, you're going to start to feel silly taking pictures of yourself cheesing in the mirror, and you're going to want to make a silly face)

post it on your blog or flickr or whatever and then comment or email and let me know! :)

you know you want to. 

muscular bones

A couple of days ago, I had to make a trip to the store after school, and Annabelle fell asleep in the car while I was driving.

Julian was tired and grouchy and continually shoved Annabelle's head off of his tiny shoulder, with grunts and whining outbursts.

"Bella's head is SO HEAVY! I want Bella's head to GET OFF ME!"

I thought I would make him feel like a good big brother, by telling him how sweet he was.

"Julian, that's what boys do for girls sometimes.  Boys are so strong and have nice strong muscles, and it's sweet when they let a girl rest their heads on their shoulders sometimes.  Daddy lets me rest my head on his shoulders all of the time.  It's a sweet thing for strong boys to do!"

I glanced in the rear view mirror to see if my sappy praise was working. 

I saw his eyes, squinting in the sun.  His little scowl and pouty lips.  He looked at Bella's head, heavier than ever on his tiny frame and said,
"yeah.  only they're not muscles, they're BONES AND THEY REALLY HURT!"

it's tough being such a little guy sometimes.

i'm not gonna name names, or anything...

i had VERY nice dreams last night, and I can only assume that it is due to whatever I ate before bed.  Which happened to be about half a dozen of these cookies (our August cookie!).

Now, I can't guarantee that you'll have the same results, but I can only warn you that if YOU eat half a dozen of these cookies before bedtime, you too might have the same dreams that I had, and this could cause you to be unable to fully concentrate on  anything the next day.

What dreams did I have?  Well, I'm definitely not gonna name names or anything...but I will say that I've never been a big fan of this particular person...until now.  ;) 

P.S.  Don't go feeling sorry for Dustin.  We both agree that dreams are fair game, and it's NOT OUR FAULT what we dream about.  Which is why I won't feel guilty about eating half a dozen cookies before bedtime for the rest of this week month my life.

caramel apples

We made caramel apples last week.  I talked it up all day, but the kids weren't super excited about them, until they saw me dipping the apples into the caramel.

"OH MAMA!  THOSE ARE CANDY APPLES!" 

apparently my children didn't know what caramel was.  what kind of mother am I?

Julian helped decorate the apples with walnuts, chocolate chips, or coconut.  or all three!

and then, apparently, we were supposed to wait an hour for them to cool.  um, yeah right. YOU try telling this little bossy pants that we're going to just sit and stare at these apple treats for an hour.

Annabelle wants to "pose" for every single picture these days.  Her posing consists of a lot of cutesy smiles and hands on hips. 

but this little wrinkled up nose shows her real personality and i LOVE it.  i can't convince her to stop the fake posing, but i can sneak in a shot or two when she's distracted by "candy apples".

in thinking back, the last time that i can remember making caramel apples was with my Mom when I was in the 4th grade (or 5th?)!  It was for my first boy/girl party for Halloween and it was one of my most favorite nights of my little girl life. 

weekly farmer's market haul

Farmer's Market Saturday

*the kids brought home little seed cups for flowers and tomatoes.  Julian thought it would be about 2 or 3 days before he could eat his own tomatoes. 
*ALWAYS get Kettle Corn . ALWAYS ALWAYS.
*flowers for mama.  i deserved them.  :)
*lots and lots of raspberries.  we froze a lot of them.
*corn
*tomatoes, that Ezra surprisingly loves.  this is normally a treat for Julian only
*green beans
*grapes (we froze a lot of these and Bella wants frozen grapes at every meal)

Julian starts soccer next week, and Annabelle starts Girl Scouts, so both of our nights that we normally head to the market are out.  We're back to Saturday mornings, which is fun, but not.  I like to sleep on Saturday mornings.  But the fun thing about the morning market is that EVERYBODY brings their dogs, and Ezra spends the entire trip barking and trying to pet the puppies.  he loves them.

Did you go this week?  What did you get?  The berries were a little hard to find and expensive, so I'm afraid we're almost out of those.  If I had the extra cash I'd buy all that I could find and freeze them.  we LOVE our berries...almost as much as we love cookies. 

and speaking of cookies, i'm almost caught up on the cookie project.  however, the last batch that I made last week  was cooling on the stove and EZRA pulled the (cool) pan off the stove top and ate them ALL.  Julian may have helped, but he was sure convincing that it was ALL EZRA, and he didn't get ANY. 
so no pictures for those, and I'll have to re-bake them again this week.  *darn*