Fine Lady

So this morning, Levi watches from the top of the sofa as Shana drives to work, then turns to Ellie:
"She sure is a fine lady."

-Matt

Chocolate sentences

Ellie's vocabulary has been exploding lately. Today after lunch we gave the kids a choice. Choose one candy from their Halloween stash, or have chocolate pudding. Ellie chose candy but of course when I started eating pudding, that is what she wanted. I gave her a bite and then she announced to Matt "I want my own chocolate pudding dada."

Tonight after work Matt made Levi some hot chocolate. Ellie saw Levi's mug on the table and said "I want some hot chocolate." I am loving her complete sentences. This age is so much fun. Just shy of learning more independence and testing us, but old enough to tell us what she needs, she has really been a delight as of late. She has also been asking "Why" frequently. Sometimes it is fun and sometimes it gets tiresome but it really does make you think more about everything.

Happy Halloween

Growing up in a strict religious home we didn't really celebrate Halloween. We had harvest parties and celebrated the real reason for the season, the bounty of food we would now have to live off of through the winter. I have very few memories of trick-or-treating, or costume parties. There are a select few. I remember my mom dressed up like some kind of karate person with a crazy mullet wig and makeup. And dad as a senior citizen farmer.

Now raising our own kids we have to decide what to do, how much to be involved in and what to tell them about all the things they see. I was not expecting all the questions about Vampires - based off of a Walgreens display.

Levi has been looking forward to Halloween for the past week and I am not sure what sparked it. But he wanted to be a RED ROBOT. So I decided to make it happen for him. Something about being a parent inspires you to make other people's dreams come true.

We happened by Goodwill a week ago and I took a look at all the costumes. No robots, but they did have a cute medieval style dress for Ellie. I didn't want to dress her like a princess with all the Disney branding that I had been seeing lately. Something simple. So for about $6 she was all squared away.

I do not have much, if any, experience in making costumes. I felt kind of bad for the little guy even before I got started. Oh sure, I had my moments of surfing Amazon and Target, looking for something I could purchase that he would settle for, but none of those really interested him. So I brought home some boxes. I put a want ad on wallawallafreecycle for some dryer vent hoses (and found some!) We went to Wal-Mart and bought red spray paint and red duct tape. He was pretty excited about that! My mom's friend Robert stopped by with a box of clothes for Levi that his son had outgrown. It was lucky that in that box was a Darth Vader one-piece with the colored buttons on the chest. I decided to cut a window out of the box so people could see the buttons if he wore that underneath.

Well I worked on his costume for about a day and a half and figured out something that would work. Bless his little heart, he loved it. He was so excited to try it on time and time again as I was trying to get all the holes in the right places. Of course he couldn't wear it in the car, so he had to wait until we got downtown to put it on for real. We taped him up and he took a couple steps and promptly tripped on the curb and fell down like a tree trunk. He did not realize he could not bend his knees as high or take as long a stride as he was used to. Thankfully he was not hurt and still had a great attitude (I think seeing a hundred other kids in costume had something to do with that). He posed for a photo and was excited to get going!

The kids both filled up their buckets going up and down Main Street downtown and some of the side streets.

By the time we were done the downtown circuit we were getting hungry, so we stopped in at Sweet Basil and ran into Jenee' and her folks and Ben & Becca and Kai.

We came home and they wanted to go around the neighborhood. So we did that, we ended up walking all the way down to Oma's house so she could see them.

On the way home we stopped at one house with an older woman. She and Levi chatted for about five minutes. He is such a little social bug! He was telling her "well after Christmas I will be five and a half, " to which the woman replied, "well after Christmas I will still be 81!" He just looked at her. "Well..." The woman said "Ha! That got him!" So we walked away. As we were leaving Levi says to me "That was sure a nice lady. And she was so old! And her skin was sure bumpy."

Levi was wanting to start conversations with every homeowner. One woman he was telling all about everything... "My name is Levi and I am five, and my sister is Ellie and she is two (to which Ellie will hold up two fingers and say "two old"), and my dad is at home, we're a four-way family." It is just so fun to hear what he will say next. Everyone to him was "so nice!" I am glad he still has appreciation for people who give him things. We even had a police officer stop his patrol car, get out and walk around to give the kids candy.

On the last stretch for home Ellie was getting tired. She would tell me "I tired of this." That is her new phrase. She is "tired" of the current activity.

All told the kids collected about four buckets of candy between the two of them. The 81-year-old woman gave them apples and they were excited about that. In fact, they wanted to eat those right away! I am glad to see they still value their healthy options. Matt and I are sharing the candy with the kids, just a little bit a day and it should last us well into 2012.

Pumpkin Butter, fail

Today I decided to take all my pumpkin guts and try to turn them into pumpkin butter, a recipe I had seen on the Krazy Coupon Lady website. While I was sorting the seeds from flesh, Ellie decided the dishes needed to be done and she was just the gal to do them! She had a very enjoyable time playing in the water with the pots.

Later on Levi decided he wanted a turn to do the dishes. Kids and water are such a happy combination. Especially when you add bubbles!

I did not have apple cider vinegar so I substituted white vinegar. Not a good idea! I am afraid the entire day that it took for the vat of pumpkin to cook down into 'butter' was for naught. It tasted ok at first but then a strange flavor took over and you just don't want to eat any more. For shame.

The kids and BeBe have a special connection. Levi has been sitting with her and petting her and then showing me how he can get BeBe to calm down.

Ellie has been helping me take the dogs out to go potty. She insists on holding the leash. A couple of times they have taken off for a sprint to the door and pulled her down since she doesn't let go. She hops up and tells me she is brave!

Family Fun

We were aiming to be in Portland again this weekend to celebrate my brother's 30th birthday, and my birthday with my dad since he's in town. But after weighing the importance of using the time to get the windows done (and the cost of gas) we decided to stay put.

My mom's birthday was also coming up soon and Friday afternoon seemed like a good day to get together for some family fun.

A co-worker gave me a bunch of pumpkins that she had grown. They were the perfect size! It was wonderful to have so many without spending any money on them. We took them over to mom's shortly after four pm.

My mom had pre-made cookie dough and she had that ready for us to roll out. We used her holiday themed cookie cutters to make leaves, pumpkins, turkeys, and cats. The kids had a lot of fun learning to roll the dough. Then they went into the oven and we had dinner.

Mom made baked potatoes, kale, carrots and black-eyed peas. She had grown the kale and carrots in her garden this year. Ellie had all her vegetables eaten before anyone else even sat down. Levi was skeptical about the kale but was willing to eat it in order to have a cookie for dessert.

After dinner we carved our pumpkins. I had printed out a couple of free patterns for everyone to choose what they wanted. Levi wanted a spider in a spider web (I think that is what I did for him last year) but I couldn't find that pattern this time. The closest I got was a spider, a profile of a face and a hand. He thought that would be great.

Ellie chose the horse (no surprise there!) I was going to do a scaredy cat but after carving two I had my fill of sawing up pumpkins for the evening!

Matt carved a neat Jack-O-Lantern with a happy face on both sides!

As if that wasn't enough fun, we then had cookies to decorate! My mom had an orange gel and s'mores icing. She also had green sugar sprinkles and multi-colored sprinkle dots. The kids were really into that. It was hard to keep the knife on the cookies and out of their mouths. When we were all done we got to take a plate home of the cookies they had made.

After loading up the (new to us) Suburban we discovered it would not start, the battery was dead. So Matt took my mom's (new) Suburban home to get the jumper cables, came back and had it going again in no time. We are not sure if it is a battery issue or an electrical issue at this point. (But otherwise I am loving it) :)

We had a good rain so we didn't put the pumpkins outside tonight. I had forgotten to buy candles. Fail.

Barbie's birthday

"Somehow this didn't make it on to my calendar, but today was Barbie's pretend birthday. To celebrate, the kids decided to have a pretend pool party, complete with pretend swimming. After that they emptied a whole box of q-tips onto the floor." - Matt

Black Cat Cookies

As a couponer, I get a lot of emails from companies trying to promote their products. I usually hit delete right away unless I see a coupon to print.

Well Land O Lakes sent out recipes with their promotional email this time, and they happened to be Halloween themed. I couldn't resist a look, and I spied these adorable Black Cat Cookies. The nice thing about them was other than the candies, I had all the other ingredients stocked in my cupboard.

They were fairly easy to make, although time consuming. Very tasty too!

Just notes

Ellie is pointing out letters: e and o; also the number 9. She is also recognizing and identifying colors.

Levi finished up his last night of karate tonight. For some odd reason he was the only student there in his class so he had undivided attention from Sensei Cindy, which he really responded well to. I had only paid for one month and there is no class on Thursday so this was it. I think he learned a fair amount, but it was more tournament-based then I had realized initially. It wasn't really what I had expected, it is more of a lifestyle then a set of classes. They are ongoing all the time. I am used to classes that have a start and a finish for all the kids, this was not that. But I am glad he had a chance to be a part of something again.

The Beard has a birthday

October 22 was Matt's birthday and after lunch he decided that what he really wanted to do was to take a drive. He decided on Little Goose Lock & Dam, about 68 miles north east of our house.

It was a beautiful day for a drive and as the spirit of adventure faded along the endless highway, both kids and I nodded off for a nap. I woke up in time to see some familiar roadway, a curvy narrow highway that led us to the Home On The Range endurance ride last spring.

Upon our arrival at the dam, the kids woke up and had some fruit snacks, ready for the next adventure.

They were very interested to see the dam, and the multitude of fisherman lined up along the fence. It looked like one man had caught something and we watched him walk down the length of the fence, but then as he got to the corner of the wall it appeared his line had broken.

We wandered around a bit, the kids enjoying the sights, and made our way over to the fish ladder.

Not much to see here, other than water. We continued our little walk around to the Fish Viewing center.

Wow there were some big fish hanging out down there! I think I learned the difference between a Carp and a Salmon.

After we relaxed with the fish and watched them swim by slow, and fast, a door opened to the side and a woman said hello and asked us if we would like to see inside her "office."

She took Ellie on her lap and showed the kids how the fish swim through the channel and she counts them with her special keyboard, recording what breed of fish and if it is a salmon, if it is wild or from the hatchery. She was very nice and talked to use for quite some time.

Matt was just loving the whole style of the building. He is very nostalgic and it reminded him of all the educational places he visited as a kid.

Back outside again and it felt a bit like a prison, with the chain link topped off with barbed wire.

Here is a nice view of the dam from the parking lot.

We drove up a hill to get a different view. It's just as impressive. The lock is really something to see.

When it's windy, cold or rainy, Ellie likes to have her hood up. It was a bit windy today and she had a hard time keeping the hood on her head.

We found something old and rusty to play on. A ranger drove by but didn't stop.

The kids did some more running around. Nothing beats some good old-fashioned exercise in the fresh air!

Ellie's latest fascination is with rocks. She loves gravel because she can pick up lots of little rocks and throw them down and do it all over again with the endless supply.

The beard seems to be having a good birthday. Speaking of beards, here is a great site to check out if you have one, or know someone who has one. The Beardly.

Once we had our fill of the Lock & Dam we drove onward to the Lyons Ferry Fish Hatchery. The historic Union Pacific Railroad bridge is an awesome, and overwhelming, sight to behold.

We went in the visitor center and I learned that Steelhead are smaller than Salmon. Then we hiked over to the Juvenile fish tanks and didn't see a whole lot. Only a couple of the tanks even had water in them. There were some tiny fish we could see jumping but overall it was a bit disappointing. Wrong time of year, I guess.

After the kids had a chance to check out the tanks, we walked over to the bigger pond. It had a big net over it and we saw a dead bird that had tried to dive through it to catch a fish, just hanging there.

We saw a couple of fish jumping in the water but otherwise it was really quiet.

On the way back to the Suburban, Ellie decided to show off her mad balancing skills that she has learned in Kidnastics. We thought about visiting Palouse Falls while we were in the neighborhood, but it was getting late so decided to do that another time.

The drive back to town must have gotten to the kids, because Ellie decided to take off her shoes and socks, and pull her jacket on over her legs. She had fun hiding and playing peek-a-boo and the laughter ensued! Levi looks half-asleep here, but don't let that fool you, he is just recharging.

How to celebrate a birthday? We decided to check out Frosted, Walla Walla's new cupcake shop. I love the decor and the whole atmosphere. We got four different flavors. Levi picked out Candy Cup because the topping had M&Ms. Ellie got Red Velvet (with candy hearts), Matt tried the Mochacinno and I got the Boston Creme.

I tasted the kids' and I must say they were really good. The frosting was good and I am not a frosting person. I usually scrape off all the frosting before I eat cakes or cupcakes. Ellie's I think was cream cheese based and Levi's seemed to be kind of an Oreo blend. Matt was happy with his. I was not thrilled with my selection. It just wasn't very good. I was expecting more creme in the center, and could hardly find it. Also the frosting on mine was bitter, and seemed inconsistently so. Overall I think they are a little overpriced. But, it's a neat niche and I hope she sticks around.

So what happens when the kids eat a cupcake for dinner and it's getting dark outside? We walked around downtown, from Frosted over to the Laht Neppur Ale House, and on the way the kids couldn't resist a little leaf gathering and tossing. We decided to order a pizza to go, and while we waited for it to bake Matt ordered some peanuts and root beer for he and Levi. Ellie and I backtracked to Goodwill to look for costumes.

A note here about Laht Neppur. They make the best root beer I have ever had. And it's fun to eat there, because you can shell your peanuts and toss it all on the floor. They have green olives as a pizza topping. Those, combined with jalapenos, makes one killer pie. And live music every so often too. I am a big fan!

At Goodwill I was just amazed with the choices of costumes. They have a whole wall of kids' costumes and another whole wall for adult costumes. I found Ellie two choices. One was a pirate lady dress, and the other was a medieval dress that was fancy without being 'princessy.' So hopefully I can make Levi into a acceptable robot and they will have a real way to dress up on Halloween for the Downtown Trick Or Treat.

Bobbitt dinner in

On Oct 21, the day-between-our-birthdays, Matt's dad Jerry and wife Gail treated us to dinner; take-out from Ming Court. I had never heard of them but it was pretty good. It is fun to eat with other people when you can all order something different and share it all and try so many new things from the menu. We had egg rolls, fried rice, ma po tofu, a curry tofu, broccoli tofu, a mushroom dish, I forget what else, there was a lot of variety and lots of leftovers too! A special thank you to Jerry & Gail for the enjoyable meal.

Shana's birthday

For my birthday this year Matt surprised me with a lunch from the Ice-Burg! I had come home from work and he told me that lunch was ready. I told him "I don't smell anything." I sat at the table and he put a veggie burger and chocolate/peanut-butter shake in front of me. Yum! What a treat.

After work he made me my favorite chipotle macaroni and cheese and Jenee' came over to join us for the meal. She and Maddaly had gotten me some Breyer horses and I thought that was so neat! I think this foal is my favorite one ;)

After dinner Matt and Levi went to the model railroaders meeting. It only happens once a month and they really enjoy it so I thought they should go. Jenee decided that since I had never been to Blue Palm before that we should go there and it would be her treat. Boy was I spoiled today! It was quite the experience. I was impressed with how many options they have for frozen yogurt and the endless toppings are quite a sight to see! After sampling a couple of flavors I decided on some pistachio and gingerbread. Ellie liked the pistachio also.

When we were done with that we went out to Jenee's and watched a movie. I had rented "Bite the Bullet" from Netflix because someone on one of my lists had mentioned it and how it was a horse movie based on a 700-mile endurance ride. It was filmed in 1975 and starred Gene Hackman. Parts of it were really slow and boring but overall I thought it was a good show.

Family, friends, food and horses. Yes, you could say I had a very good birthday!

Pizza!

For my birthday, Doug & Cindy took the family out to eat at Sweet Basil, our favorite pizza shop. We went on Wednesday night since our week was pretty full with Karate on Tues/Thurs evenings. This was the first time we sat in the new addition. There is a kid's corner also which is really fun. It has books and paper and crayons for the kids to draw on. If your child draws a nice picture for them they will frame it and put it on the wall. A special thank you to Doug & Cindy for the meal and gifts! I had a really enjoyable evening :)

Day at home

Today I knew I had to get some stuff done around the house. I had a bag of rhubarb (17 cups after I chopped it!) and a box of tomatoes that needed to be dealt with. Matt went to the office to work on his book so it was just me and the kids today.

I LOVE rhubarb pie. I don't even need the strawberries. So I got a recipe from Karyl and started in on it. Well my first challenge was deciding if I needed to pre-bake my crust. When I have made this crust in the past it bakes for close to 2 hours. Karyl's recipe did not call for that much baking so I wasn't sure what to do. I decided not to pre-bake it. Probably fail #1. Karyl's recipe called for 2 tbsp orange concentrate. I did not have any of that and didn't want to run to the store (again) so I looked in the freezer and spied my frozen cherries. Cherries seemed like they would go well with rhubarb, so I tossed a bunch in the blender (1 cup) and ground them up. I also did not have almond flavoring so I substituted orange flavoring. Seemed like it should all be fine, right? Well I forgot to add the butter at the end. Fail #2. I put the pie in the oven and Matt called. I told him about my recent attempt and he pointed out that the cherries would offer a lot more moisture. Well it was too late to do anything about it now. Fail #3. I was not happy with my crust after Karyl's recommended cooking time so I left it in another 10, then 20, then 30 minutes. It could have cooked another 20 minutes at least in my opinion. Despite all that, it did taste good. But it was very soggy in the center. The outer 2/3 of the crust was good but the center was not what you want to eat with your pie.

Levi was so funny. He was eating it and picking out the rhubarb. He said "what is this?" I told him the stuff that looks like celery is the rhubarb. He said "well, I don't like that too well." He asked "what is the red stuff?" I told him it was the cherries. He said "That is good, you should just make a cherry pie." Then he adds "next time you should put celery in it instead. I asked him why? He said "because then it wouldn't be sour."

Then it was time to tackle the salsa. I chopped my box of tomatoes and added Serrano chiles, cilantro, a head of cabbage, tomatillos, and fresh squeezed lime juice. It needed salt and I don't think I added enough. It turned out pretty mild. The trouble was when I touched my face with my hand after chopping the chiles. It started to BURN. So I went to the bathroom to wash my hands and hold some water up to my cheek. Somehow it got into my eye, and that was excruciating! I started screaming and jumping up and down. The kids thought that was hysterical. I ran to the computer and tried to google how to treat this problem. It was hard to see with one eye shut and the other streaming tears. The best I could find was to run it under cold water for 5-15 minutes until the pain stops. So that is what I did. Matt came home for dinner not long after that. He tried the salsa and said it was really mild. We have enough to eat it for every meal for over a week. I see lots of tacos in my future.

Fun day with the kids

This morning we were up so I decided to take the kids to Sabbath School. We drove over to the Village Church and I thought we would be just barely on time but as it turns out we were early. There were only a couple of kids in the classroom as we waited. I was so proud of the kids, they sat in their chairs very still and patient, looking all around.

Levi was so excited to see the theme this quarter for the Kindergarten (4-5) class was race cars. They had lots of fun things for the kids to do. They took a dragonfly around and sang to the visitors. They let all the kids come up and get a matchbox or hot wheel car and park it in the parking lot at the church (on the left in the photo above). They had a song with red, yellow and green lights and puppets and Ellie thought that was so fun she got out of her chair and was dancing around. At one point they turned out the lights and there was a black light on so all the kids with white started glowing, that was really neat.

Then they handed out little cars with LED headlights that the kids could put on their finger while they sang "this little light of mine" and they turned off the lights again so the kids could see their little lights shine. Levi saw me taking a photo and he shone his right at me!

All in all the kids had such a great time, it was really enjoyable for them - and me, since they were so well behaved. I wasn't sure if Ellie would do ok in the older class but she did just great.

After that we went home and got the kids changed into play clothes and Oma came to pick us up in her new Suburban! We went to check out the Kids' Day at the Farmer's Market downtown.

The first thing the kids saw were the big tractors, so they had to climb up and sit in the cab. Levi asked 'why does it have two seats?' I told him sometimes it takes two people to drive these tractors.

Levi wanted to get up in the next tractor but there was a little girl in the cab, so instead of standing around waiting we went across the street to check out the roping girls. They showed the kids how to throw a lasso, then they reminded us to go to the Fair next weekend. Here is Levi pulling his rope taught, and Ellie is in the background.

Ellie roped a steer too!

After that the tractor was available so the kids climbed up and noticed this one only had one seat, so they had to share. They also had a disagreement over who should get to steer.

We crossed back to the other side of the street to see the critters. They had a miniature horse named Babe, a standard size horse named Miracle, and a donkey foal who was only 4 months old and I can't remember her name. She was sure cute, and loved the attention. Miracle got a little testy when we tried to pet her. Then Babe peed and it started smelling pretty foul so we we went to the other side of the road again

A fireman was explaning to an older boy what the parts of the Fire Truck were, and Levi thought that was pretty interesting. We learned that they can strap into an oxygen tank from their seat in the cab. The booth was out of fireman hats but the kids each got a coloring book.

We went and wandered around the booths a bit at the Market and the Kid's main booth handed us all kinds of stuff. The booth next to them had an activity where you turn a zucchini into a derby car by stuffing nails and washers and wooden wheels on it. I helped Levi build one and he raced it down the lane. The girl at the end told him he did a good job and gave him a blue ribbon. He asked if he could trade it for a red one because red is his favorite color.

There were coolers of water for sale but I didn't have any cash on me. The kids were trying to steal ice cubes out of the coolers to eat because they were pretty thirsty. I found a shaved ice booth and got them their first ice cone to share. I got a lemonade and shared it with mom.

I thought the kids would like two flavors, and figured Levi would want a red one, so we got cherry on half and root-beer on the other half. Well they both liked root-beer better so next time I will know not to mix flavors. We found a small spot in the shade to sit and eat and listen to the music performers.

Ellie drank a lot of my lemonade. It was sure good.

We went home after that and had lunch. The kids went down for their naps and I had a short one too. Levi never did fall asleep so he got up after I got Ellie to sleep and he played while I worked on some model horse projects. I am participating in a swap so I have a deadline for once! I have other projects I started last winter and it feels great to be working on them again.

There is an endurance ride coming up called "Bare Bones" and the ride flyer has a horse skeleton on it. I thought that was a cool idea for a repaint so I ordered glow in the dark paint and have been working on a test subject. Here she is so far, she still needs a lot of work and the photo is blurry but it will give you an idea of one of my current projects. I am hoping to get a couple done and donate them as prizes for the ride.

Here is what she looks like in the daylight (far left) with a couple other works-in-progress.

After dinner we took the kids for a walk in the neighborhood. On the way home I saw a praying mantis on the sidewalk and it was really fast! I had not seen one move that quickly before so I called the kids back to see it. Matt let it crawl up on his hand and carried it all the way home. I told him he should put it in his beard for a photo but he didn't like that idea!

The kids finally got brave enough to take turns holding it and the last time Ellie held it, it ran up her arm, on her shoulder, up her neck and right across her face! She gave a little gasp and froze. I got it off her as fast as I could but it was quick! She started laughing after that. I am glad she wasn't traumatized.

It was on my head but decided it didn't want to be up there so leapt but landed on my shoulder. Can you see it?