Skip to main content

Chores and Pumpkins

It seems that every time we go to the Children's Museum Meadow gets a cold. I let her have orange juice with her breakfast. 

Ever since I taught Meadow how to use a piggy bank we give her all our coins so she can add them in.

This may be another reason why she gets colds.

As we were heading out to go to the Farmers Market one of the neighbor kids spotted us and asked if he could come along. 

He had never been here before and was surprised that it was an outdoor market.

He assumed it was in a big building like a grocery store.

He hung around with us for most of the day.

His family is moving soon. This may be one of the last chances to hang with us.

I made a tandoori roast turkey over the past few days and we ate leftovers like it was an Indian Thanksgiving.

The neighbor boy noticed the crock so I opened it up. Our sauerkraut was ready!


We were all excited for all the possibilities until Brooke told me I had to can the kraut.

While Meadow napped I did some yard work. Scott was inside trying to figure out how canning works.

Eventually we switched roles. I was getting frustrated trying to plant flower bulbs in our rocky soil and Scott didn't quite understand all the steps to canning.

I got exactly this far.

We got six jars worth (one wasn't full enough to can) all for only 3 dollars of cabbage. 

We were supposed to carve pumpkins with Tyler and Emma. Since Cevonne and Jose moved to Texas we had to find someone else to carve with. Meadow took a long nap and canning the sauerkraut took too long so they started without us.

We stayed home and made dinner instead with the intent of carving pumpkins.

I had Meadow go first. I taped on a face and was going to have her paint the pumpkin. 

She was totally not into it. She wanted to finger paint instead so I kept putting the pumpkin in front of her and every time she pushed it away more paint go on it. 

Eventually we had leftover turkey and wild rice soup. It was good.

After Meadow was done with painting I filled in some areas for her.

The next day we worked on ours. 

It was sad to not be able to share this time with Cevonne and JT.

I got to carve the pumpkin I grew. When I went to get it out of the garden there was a bunch of bugs and slugs on it. I was afraid they had gotten into the pumpkin.

Meadow had fun playing with the guts.

My pumpkin was easy enough to gut. Everything was looking up with a great start via the nose.

My pumpkin was a bit oblong, but I think this did it justice.

Not bad this year.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Sisters, a Brother and Walking Chicago

  Summer always seems to mean one thing: weddings. Whether I'm shooting or attending, we're bound to end up at a few every year.  This time around we were heading down to Chicago from my big sister Katrina's nuptials. I feel like all our vacations are centered around a wedding or something wedding related. I wish we could go on a vacation without having to worry about being somewhere.   It also means a few repetitive trips down I-94. There aren't nearly enough unique stops off the interstate. One outlier is Foster Cheese Haus , the only organic Wisconsin cheese shop I know of. Run by the folks behind Castle Rock Organic Farms , we always try to stop by. Unfortunately for us they were closed on Wednesdays, but at least we got to spy on their darling garden out front.    Brooke and I arrived in Necedah. We decided to stop at Brooke's sister Brittany's home along the way to cut the ride in half and get her dressed hemmed.   ...

Dakotas Road Trip: Badlands and Black Hills

  I thought we would skip Wall Drug this time since we've seen it before but Scott was gun ho on going.  Come on. You can't go to the Badlands and skip the world's greatest tourist trap. First stop ice cream.  We thought we would have lunch here but after seeing the prices decided we would cook something at the park instead. But first we had to take a couple tourist pics. When we we decided we were coming here I was expecting it to be 90's and hot. Did not think it would be rainy, chilly and foggy.  I always make Brooke look cool. She on the other hand always finds a way to take a pic at the most awkward possible moment. Either that or I'm just really awkward. Earlier this year, I asked Theo where he wanted to go on vacations this year. He said he wanted to backpack camp at the Badlands because he was sad he didn't get to go yet. This is all for you buddy.

Japan Family Trip - Part II: Exploring the Shrines and Wilds of Nikko

We had originally planned on taking the bullet train down from Tokyo to Kyoto for a day or two. While being epically fast, it was a bit spendy for the four of us.  After talking to Brooke's coworker we settled on a two day trip to Nikko and its World Heritage Sites to break up our week in Tokyo. This turned out to be an amazing decision. The town is teaming with beauty from ancient shrines to epic waterfalls and some of the best meals we had on our trip. Kyoto didn't seem all that appealing to me when I started researching which location to go to. I too am glad we chose to head north to Nikko.  When we booked our Tobu Nikko Spacia X tickets I upgraded to the premium seats thinking that we'd be sitting facing one another. Instead we ended up with 4 individual seats, two in the first two rows and two in the last two rows. It turned out just fine with the kids sitting in front of us in two groups. Meadow and I were seated at the front of the car. Once in awhile we'd pas...