Fall Cleanup

While Mom was out of town we worked hard to cleanup the leaves in the yard.

Sometimes you need to make up a song to stay motivated!

Halloween 2012

For the past number of years, our little town of Broadway has had trick or treating on Main Street on Halloween.  This year they postponed the event until the Monday after Halloween, supposedly because of Hurricane Sandy.  Since today was perfectly clear (though quite cool), I'm not quite sure I understand this decision.  I know we won't be venturing back out on Monday, so I wonder how many folks feel the same way we do.

So, we did trick or treating the old fashioned way this year.

Super Girl and her trusty sidekick Betsy Ross

We first walked up to Grandma's house, where we found this:

A crazy witch that kept cackling really loudly, which made Hannah cover her ears in fear.  The witch then accompanied us to neighbor Donna's house and then around her neighborhood.  Quite a few people were out and about trick or treating, which was nice to see since we didn't have many kids come to our house last year.

Since it was chilly, we only stayed out for less than an hour, seeing neighbors and friends and hearing Grandma cackle every so often.  When we returned home the girls checked out their loot and enjoyed a few treats before heading to bed.

A good Halloween all around!

Witches Hat Cupcakes

Tuesday the girls and I were off school for a second day because of Hurricane Sandy.  We could have been in school since the weather wasn't too bad, but it was very nice to be home and have some down time.  We decided to do this in anticipation of Halloween the next day:

Aren't they cute? (the cupcakes and the girls)

First the girls looked through some of my cookbooks to decide what they wanted to make.

So many choices!

They couldn't decide on just one idea but had it narrowed down to either witches hat cookies or frog cupcakes.  We wanted something Halloween-y, so we merged the two recipes to create... witches hat cupcakes!

Mmmm, cake batter.

Sophie piping the ribbon around the witches hat (Hershey's kiss)

The finished product

Enjoying the fruits of their labors ...

One ate her hat first ...

... and one saved the hat for last.

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! :)