Hurricane Sandy, Finger Puppets and Jillian Michaels

Hurricane Sandy entered our area beginning on Monday this week.  This was forecasted to be a "mega-storm" and was quite destructive in DC and north of there due to lots of wind and rain.  Here we got a fair amount of rain on Monday, some wind Monday afternoon and evening, and two days off of school because of what was forecasted to be and never quite materialized.

Dad and Hannah sharing Blanky action

So, on Monday the girls occupied themselves by making finger puppets (among other things).

Hard at work creating their puppets

The finished puppets

The finger puppet play they performed for me later in the afternoon

I was thrilled to receive this in the mail today:

Jillian Michaels' Body Revolution

I've been wanting this 90-day workout series since it came out earlier this year, but the $120 price tag was a bit prohibitive.  At school I recently completed 30 days each of tracking my eating (which I do all the time anyway), my exercise (at least 2.5 hours per week), and my sleep (at least 50 hours per week).  We have a wellness program that aims to promote good health by providing some incentives for employees to adopt healthy habits.  By tracking these three health items, I earned $150 in wellness money to spend on anything health related.  Thus, my Jillian Michaels purchase.  I also had $40 in wellness money leftover from last year, so I went to the Runners Corner and purchased a good quality pair of running pants that will keep me warm when running on cold fall and winter mornings.  I'm excited about both purchases and looking forward to beginning the Body Revolution program.

Weekend Unplugged

This past weekend the girls and I unplugged.  We went to my parents' cabin to spend time there with them and with my sister Kelly and her family.  We stayed Friday and Saturday nights and came out on Sunday in time for church and for Hurricane Sandy, which turned out not to be too devastating for our area (thankfully).  Here are some pictures from our weekend, with Charles joining us for the day on Saturday.

Feeding Carter, he's turned into a great eater.

Eating Carter?

Bucktoothed Carter, a product of the banana puffs he was eating

Playing with Carter

Hannah doing "Itsy Bitsy Spider"

Kelly and Jon brought pumpkins to carve

Hannah carved two

I was in charge of roasting seeds

Charles' pumpkin

Big C and Little C

Sophie (and Hannah) love to hold Carter, soon he'll be too big!

Crusty French Boules

Last Monday I made some awesome little french bread boules that were super easy to make and very delicious.  Tuesday they were delivered to the girls' school with some homemade pumpkin butter for the teachers to enjoy as a snack.  The recipe for the bread comes from Cooking Light.

The recipe calls for preparing a pate fermentee 48 hours ahead of time and refrigerating it for two days.  That is really the only difficult part of this recipe, remembering that you need to plan ahead to make it!

After the pate fermentee rests in the fridge for two days, it is then added to warm water and yeast, along with flour and salt.  That is all the ingredients folks.  After a first rise, the dough is divided into two balls and shaped into loaves for the 2nd rise.

These are ready to go into the oven.  These bake at high temperature.  For the first few minutes a pan of water is kept on the floor of the oven.

The finished product.  I probably should have pulled them out of the oven a few minutes sooner, but it still tasted great.  Crusty on the outside, soft and chewy on the inside.  I definitely want to make this bread again!

Devotions for Girls

Each night we read a devotion from a Veggies Tales devotion book for girls.  Sometimes one of the girls reads the devotion, and sometimes Charles or I will read it.

Lately the girls have been wanting to look up the verse that goes with each devotion in their own Bibles.  I think this is great.  It allows them to read the verse from the source and gives them practice in locating things in the Bible.

The other evening I found the following posted on Hannah's dry erase board in her room.  Looks like she's given herself quite a bit of Bible reading to do!

Notice it says at the bottom that "if one or more is not in Bible, skip it."  She informed me that she made up some books since she wasn't sure if they were in the Bible or not, such as 3 John.  I guess her instincts served her well in this case! :)

A Day of Festivals

Multiple fall festivals are happening in our area this weekend.  Yesterday we went to two of them, the car show and fall festival in downtown Broadway and a fall festival at a local apple orchard.  At both events there was lots of food, especially apple products: baked, fried, cidered, you name it!

Enjoying sweet, delicious kettle corn

Sophie feigned fear when she saw this very large stuffed lion

Have you ever seen a cuter giraffe or lamb?

Showalter's Orchard

They liked these warty pumpkins

Lunch at Tina's afterward, they drew while we waited for Granny and Papa

Charles was going to take them to a third festival today, the EMES fall festival at their school.  Instead they decided to spend a few days with Granny and Papa since there's no school on Monday.  So our house is a little quieter this weekend!

Hanging on Our Fridge

By Sophie

Self-portrait

Hannah's creation with various keys to understand all the patterns

Sophie's drawing of mom with a crown saying "Where Jesus walked" -- the Gathering theme at school this year

Hannah assures me that the top message is not related to the bottom picture

Allowance and chore chart

All-Day Bread and Halloween Preview

So, here are the two measly loaves of bread that literally took me all day to bake:

Oatmeal bread

I'm not sure what happened, but when I first mixed up the dough this morning something went off with the yeast.  It just never rose.  I waited over two hours but nothing happened.  I think maybe I added the yeast when the rest of the mixture was still too warm.  That's the only thing I can figure.

I didn't want to lose the effort that I had put into mixing up this dough though, so to Google I went.  Searching "bread dough won't rise" scored me multiple hits right away, and I decided to go ahead and add another batch of yeast, as several websites suggested.  That seemed to do the trick, but by now it was already lunchtime.  Since this particular bread has to rise three times, it wasn't finished and out of the oven until after 6pm.  I sliced into it just a bit ago for a wee taste, and it's really quite good.  Glad the batch wasn't ruined!

The girls and I were home alone most of today while Charles worked concessions at a JMU football game to raise money for the EMES PTF.  In between tending my bread I made a warm eggplant salad for lunch and roasted pumpkins and pumpkin seeds and then made a big batch of pumpkin butter for the freezer.  I also did a few loads of laundry but pretty much spent the whole day in the kitchen.  I had wanted to work on some craft projects but didn't really have time to get into those.

We didn't eat a grand dinner, but I did make mashed potatoes because Sophie had been asking for them for several days and I had promised her I would make them over the weekend.  She ate three helpings.  Hannah choked down one very small serving.  I had baked sweet potatoes from our garden.  This is the sum total of our sweet potato harvest this year, enough for one meal!

Teeny, tiny sweet potatoes

The past couple of weeks we've been planning ahead for Halloween.  Hannah wants to be Betsy Ross.  I've enjoyed making the girls' costumes the last few years, but my sewing skills are definitely not advanced enough to make a colonial-era dress, hat, apron, etc.  So the other night we found a reasonably-priced costume on Amazon and ordered that.  It should be here on Tuesday.

Sophie wants to be SuperGirl.  Grandma is going to make her a gold cape out of material we bought earlier this week.  We had also planned to make a shirt for her to wear with a big "S" on the front, but when we were shopping at Wal-Mart yesterday afternoon we found this:

Perfection

We quickly scooped it up and even managed to find some red tights in Sophie's size.  Once Grandma makes her cape her costume will be ready to go!

A Typical Afternoon

I very much relish my time at home, so most days we leave school as soon as we can.  This is partly because I'm usually ready to be home and partly because the girls make a mess of the closet in my classroom if they're allowed too much time to play and be there.  Lately they've turned it into a snowflake shop.  They make paper snowflakes and "customers" come to buy them.

When we get home, the girls get busy on homework and I get busy fixing dinner. (Right after changing into my comfy clothes, of course.)  Typically the girls have to read a bit, practice their word study words and will sometimes have a math worksheet.  They're always encouraged to practice their math facts with an online program as well.  Here was the scene earlier this week:

They like to work in the library.

Hannah reading at her "desk."

Sophie working in her math workbook at her "desk."

When Charles arrives home between 5:30 and 6:00 (if he doesn't have a meeting keeping him out late) we sit down together and have dinner.  At dinner we like to share our favorite parts of our day, and Charles and I usually nag the girls to finish eating their food.  On a good day when all is going smoothly, the girls might have time to watch a little TV (typically Netflix) before or after dinner.  Their evening chores involve packing part of their lunch for the next day, getting their backpacks ready to go, and picking out clothes for the next day.

Baths are then taken, teeth brushed, stories read, and songs sung so that little girls can be tucked in between 7:00 and 7:30pm.  When you have to get up around 6:00am to get out of the house by 7:00am, getting to bed early to get enough sleep is important!  Hannah's always been a morning person, but lately she's complained of being sleepy a lot.  It will be interesting to see if she gets up a little easier when the time changes and it's not so dark in the mornings anymore.

Gymnastics on a Cold Day

Mondays are now gymnastics days.  Since watching the Olympics this summer, the girls decided they wanted to give gymnastics a try.  So we signed them up for a class through Harrisonburg Parks and Rec this fall.  So far they are really enjoying it, though they have plenty of room to grow in their gymnastics skills!  Cartwheels involve planted hands and feet that just barely jump off the ground before landing a little way over to the side.  Despite the large class size (20+ with four teachers), they seem to be learning a few things and certainly are having fun.

Sophie doing a bridge

Hannah in mid-roll--forward roll, that is

This week is definitely feeling like fall.  We've had lows in the 30s and highs only in the 40s and 50s.  On gymnastics day this week I don't think the temperature got out of the 40s.  In years past, we've attempted a "No Heat October" in which we try to avoid turning on the heat until November.  When we got home from gymnastics yesterday the inside temperature of the house was 64 degrees, with lows to drop into the 30s again last night.  So, we turned on the heat before October is even halfway over.  We'll probably turn it off again tomorrow morning since highs are supposed to be in the 60s the rest of the week.  Here are my girls eating dinner last evening in our 64 degree house:

An appropriately dressed girl

An inappropriately dressed girl who's happy about eating a meatball.  But she says she's not cold!

Relief Sale and First 5K

This weekend was the annual Virginia Mennonite Relief Sale, an event filled with good food, money for MCC, and lots of Mennonites.  The event begins with a Friday evening meal and auction.  Saturday morning there's a delicious breakfast of pancakes, omelets, or biscuits and gravy.  Then the auction continues.  Other food items are for sale throughout the day including world-famous donuts, baked goods, Brunswick stew, Indian or Laotian food, baked potatoes, homemade potato chips, apple butter and apple cider, ice cream, BBQ chicken, and a Saturday plate lunch.

Giving Dad bunny ears after eating breakfast

See that huge smile?  Sophie REALLY liked her breakfast!

Eating world-famous donuts while waiting for the race to begin. See me stretching in the background?

Watching the auction with Grandma

The auction

Taking an ice cream break.  Charles had black raspberry, Sophie had cookies and cream, and Hannah had peanut butter.  I had a small taste of each, and Hannah's was by far the best.

 

This year is the 3rd year that they've organized a 5k as part of the relief sale.  Last year I thought about running in it but didn't get around to registering or actually doing it.  This year, two days before the sale, I decided this would be my year to run it as my FIRST EVER 5k.  Since being sick I hadn't run more than one mile, but I decided to just do my best and walk the rest if needed.  So I showed up just after 7:30am to register the morning of the race.  I ended up running most of it, except for a few short stints of walking during the 3rd (and last) mile.  My first two miles were in the 8:45-9:00 pace range, and my 3rd mile was more like 10:30 with the walking that I did.  I'm pleased with how I performed in my first race, especially since I wasn't fully trained/prepared.  Here are a few pictures snapped by my cheering section:

Waiting for the race to start.  It wasn't as cool this morning as was forecasted, it was in the mid-60s during the race.

My number!

Chatting with Greta Ann while waiting to start running.

Finishing my first mile with 8:42 on the clock

Rounding the bend during mile 2

Running past my cheering section during mile 3.  This was between bouts of walking.

Crossing the finish line with a time of 27:56

Enjoying a cup of coffee at breakfast after the race