"Love" is in the Air

Earlier in the week the girls rediscovered their silly band bracelets and were wearing them to school.  Sophie gave me the one pictured below, because "we love each other and we can each wear one to show how much we love each other."  She gave me permission to keep it on my bedside stand while I'm sleeping.  Charles got one too.

It's been harder for Charles to continue his exercise regime now that the sun doesn't rise until after 6:30 each morning.  One day this week he used an app on his iPad to do a circuit routine and was joined by a little person who was also up early.  Here's a blurry photo of them doing squats:

Charles worked today on constructing an art center for the girls in the basement.  This project will probably take several weekends, but he got a good start today.  The girls had a blast watching him and running downstairs to upstairs and back again checking his progress.  At one point, Sophie wanted to "dress up" to make Dad laugh while he was working.  Here's what she wore:

This morning I discovered a rotten spaghetti squash on our shelf in the laundry room.  While cleaning up that mess, I found a couple of delicata squash that needed to be used before they went the way of the spaghetti squash.  Having never eaten this beautiful vegetable before, I went online looking for recipes and found several that I want to try.  Tonight I made roasted delicata squash stuffed with a quinoa salad made with apples, raisins and tossed in a light honey red wine vinaigrette.  It was delicious, and I loved the taste and texture of the delicata squash.  It is creamy and would be delicious roasted on its own, which I'll try with some of the others we have.  It's also easy to prepare, and you can even eat the skin.  A win-win all around, I would say!

Isn't it beautiful?  It might surpass acorn squash as my favorite squash.  I'll definitely want to plant it again next year, and I may have to find it in stores too once my small supply is gone.

Late Summer Harvest

This past weekend I canned our first batch of tomatoes.  Last summer I made three batches of salsa, marinara sauce, and attempted catsup, in addition to canning diced tomatoes.  This summer we still have some salsa left, and I am limited on time since the tomatoes took longer to ripen due to the cool summer.  So I'm setting my sights lower and only planning to can diced tomatoes.  I do want to can more than I did last summer, however, since I didn't have enough to last the year.  I use them in so many recipes that I want to have lots on hand.

I got a good start this weekend, canning a total of 21 pints (10 of orange tomatoes, 11 of red tomatoes).  I'm hoping to do several more batches to have at least 50 pints stored away for the winter.

We also harvested all our winter squash this weekend, since the vines had died away about a week or two ago.  I'm not sure what happened to them, and it's unfortunate that not all the squash got to fully mature and ripen.  We collected what was there, however.  Charles also pulled out all the summer squash and cucumber plants since they were pretty much done producing.

We debated about where to store all this, since you're supposed to keep them in a place that's dark, cool, and dry.  Our basement has been very damp this summer, and we had pumpkins rot down there last year, so we ruled that out.  We settled on a closet in the laundry room, where they will be dark and dry.  Two out of three ain't bad!

We harvested around 15 spaghetti squash and 6-8 each of butternut, delicata, acorn squash, and pumpkins.  Not a bad haul given that the plants died out about a month early!

For the fall I've planted some kale and more lettuce.  We're still waiting on a few pumpkins to finish maturing, and we still have some watermelon as well.  Plus there are the tomato plants and some remaining corn that will soon be ready.  (Have I mentioned that we've eaten corn on the cob for every meal the past week?)  We decided to plant a cover crop of buckwheat this year, to nourish the soil and to help control the weeks.  Charles spread a bunch of seed in the areas of the garden where he pulled squash and cucumber plants this weekend, so I'll be anxious to see that start coming up.

And, just for fun before I wrap up this post, here's a selfie of me and my awesome Harrisonburg Downtown Renaissance mug that Charles picked up for me last week.  Did I mention it was free?  Yeah, baby!

First Day of School, 2013-2014

4th grade girls at Back to School Night

Sophie's desk space she created

The hallway scene with signs that say not to disturb

Hannah's desk she created in her room

Breakfast and a backpack

Squishy apple stress balls

Sophie didn't want to cooperate for the picture ...

... but once I gave up and was ready to walk away she wanted me to snap another.

The sign on Hannah's door

Reese Puffs, the breakfast of champions

First day posing on the play set

First day posing on the driveway

Sophie's Special Day

This past Saturday was Sophie's "special" day to spend with just her and Grandma as a late part of her birthday.  She had been looking forward to this day forever... anticipating it, planning for it, fretting that it wouldn't happen.  Just last week she was whining (in serious fashion) that she was NEVER going to get to have her special day because I had to go back to meetings and school and she'd have to wait until NEXT YEAR to even do it.  My calm suggestions that perhaps her special day could occur on a weekend were immediately and very emotionally rebuffed.

So when Saturday rolled around and it was finally time for her day, she didn't want to go. At least not by herself.  She wanted Hannah to go too.  Unfortunately, Hannah didn't want to go.  She and I had made plans to tag-team cleaning the bathrooms (with extra allowance in it for her, of course), shop for fabric at Ben Franklin, and then have me hunker down to get a serious amount of school work done (since I was way behind in being ready for students on Monday).  Plus Hannah doesn't like going to the movies (they're too loud), which was part of Sophie's plan for her day.

So, at the last minute we rearranged plans.  Sophie, Grandma, Hannah, and I went shopping in the morning to buy the girls outfits for the first day of school (photos to come later).  They encountered some riding motorized animals outside of Belk that Sophie talked Grandma into paying for them to ride.  They said it was fun, but they didn't seem too enthralled during their 3-minute ride.

Then we went to Chipotle for lunch, where Sophie really wanted to get her own taco that she could put things on.  This was something she'd also been looking forward to for several weeks, since one day awhile ago when we were deciding whether to eat out at Chipotle or Grilled Cheese Mania.  (On that particular day we actually ended up at Francesco's as a compromise, since Sophie wanted Chipotle and Hannah wanted Grilled Cheese Mania.)  Since then Sophie had been wanting her taco from "Taco Mania," as Hannah started calling it.

Sadly, the hype did not live up to the actual experience.  She thought the chips were "spicy" and didn't eat much of the soft taco that she filled with black beans and cheese.  Finally she gave up and split Hannah's piece of pizza that we purchased at the mall before driving to Chipotle.

Next we killed a little time at Barnes & Noble (with me going next door to Bed Bath & Beyond and scoring a long-handled bottle brush and a pie crust cover).  Hannah and I then drove them to the movie theater to watch Smurfs 2 while we did grocery shopping at Wal-Mart.

I don't like shopping for groceries in stores I'm not familiar with, and the busy-ness of Wal-Mart made this trip even less enjoyable.  We got what we needed, however, and then had some time to spare.  So we made use of some Klines gift cards and Hannah's love for chocolate peanut butter, which was the delicious flavor of the week.

So, I never did get any school work done, but it was a fun and productive day none-the-less.  (Especially when you consider that Charles cleaned the bathrooms, I squeezed in laundry along the way, and tackled some garden tasks and paying bills in the evening.)

Rockingham County Fair 2013

First ride of the night!

Meeting the one-month-old baby calf

Riding the horses

Fun at the "fun house"

Top of the fun house

Bert sticking his hand in the alligator's mouth, a highlight of the evening for both girls

Exiting through the spinny thing at the "other fun house"

Petting the mini horse ("It's actually called that!")

"Take a picture of me in front of the cows, Dad."

The best fried chicken EVER, according to Sophie

Sliding... whee!!

Tea cups and banana boats

Tooth Fairies and Flossing Reminders

Soon Sophie will be visiting a pediatric dentist to have six of her baby teeth removed.  We noticed several months ago that a permanent tooth on the bottom was coming in behind her other teeth.  She takes after both her mother and her father, and there's just not room in her little mouth (believe it or not) for all those teeth.  Now she has two teeth growing back there.

So, we took her to our hometown dentist, who advised us to consult the orthodontist.  We had just been to the orthodontist for the first time a month previous for Hannah's first consult.  (Spoiler alert: The result of that appointment was to come back in one year for another consult, meaning no braces yet.  Yay!)

The orthodontist said Sophie needs to have 7 baby teeth removed to make room for the permanent teeth to move into place.  He says her tongue will do the work of slowly moving the teeth into position, and we'll do braces later on down the line.  It's best to get the teeth into place now though (by removing the baby teeth) so that the orthodontic work later will not be as extensive.

Two of her baby teeth that need to be removed were loose, so Charles told Sophie that he would double whatever the tooth fairy brings for any teeth that she wiggled out before her appointment on September 9th.  Since the dentist's fee is $150/tooth, he figured this arrangement was a win-win.

So, the night before we left for our trip to North Carolina, one of the two teeth fell out.  She very meticulously left it for the tooth fairy, along with this note outside her bedroom door:

"Hi, Tooth Fairy.  Can you be with me?  I am going to North Carolina tomorrow.  Bye."

I'm not sure if she was worried that the tooth fairy might not come that night or what, but I guess she just wanted to cover her bases!

And on the matter of teeth, there's a sign in my bathroom (made by Sophie) that's been helping me in my perpetual struggles to floss:

"Floss teeth, remember OK?"  OK!

Granny's Visit and the Bergton Fair

So, as mentioned in the last post, Granny came to visit us for a couple of days.  The stated purpose of her trip was to go on the annual yard crawl mega-yardsale with Charles on Saturday.  This is a humongous string of yard sales stretching along Rt. 11 from New Market to Winchester.  Last year they made it from Timberville to just past Woodstock.  This year they had a rainy morning and were able to progress farther, making it all the way to Strasburg by mid-afternoon.  Charles came home with a shelf for the basement (he bought one on last year's yard crawl too), some tools, and superhero action figures for the girls to play with.  Lately they've been into watching Justice League and enjoying the various superheroes, so they've been playing with these new toys in the last few days.

While they were yard crawling, the girls and I went blackberry picking at the mountain with Grandma and Grandpa.  We waited for the rain to pass before going.  When we first arrived it was still drizzling and cloudy, which was perfect picking weather.  Within an hour the sun had come out and made it incredibly humid and uncomfortable, especially given that we were wearing jeans and warmer clothes.  When we returned home, a dip in the pool felt good for cooling and cleaning off.  We picked about 3 gallons worth of good blackberries.  I froze two gallons, and Grandma kept the rest.  These will be good for enjoying throughout the fall and winter, in yogurt or in pies.  Yum!

On Friday we took Granny on some local shopping trips.  We needed groceries from Food Lion, but also stopped by the local peach stand, went to an apple orchard for apples, and acquainted her with the local Family Dollar.  I spent the rest of that day processing food that Charles had harvested from the garden while we were in North Carolina.

And that night, we went to the Bergton Fair... the event we look forward to all year long.  Rides were not yet open when we first arrived, so Charles and Sophie had their fried chicken plates with fries and white bread.  (Hannah and I had eaten at home before leaving, as had Granny.)  We sat under the shelter and played BINGO for 25 cents a card or 50 cents for three cards.  We didn't win.  Granny and the girls got some popcorn, and by then it was time to purchase arm bands and start riding rides.  We noticed that the girls have outgrown some of the rides here, as they were wanting to do bigger and faster ones this year.  For the most part, they were tall enough to do this on their own.  They could even do the Scrambler, which Sophie was up for (but Hannah was not, so they didn't do that one).  And as always, we finished up with ice cream. 

Unfortunately, Sophie got sick on the way home... most likely a factor of greasy food, fast rides, and reading her Smoky the Bear comic while driving.  We were all piled in Chris' truck that we're trying to sell, but we were able to contain most of the mess and wash it well once we got home.  No lingering vomit smell, yay! 

Here are the photos from the fair:

This was one of the "bigger, faster" rides... after some initial hesitation, they ended up riding it twice.

Hannah's favorite, the swings

Sophie wanted to spin the heart, Hannah did not

The dragon roller coaster... riding in the last car

Exiting the fun house

We may have outgrown this ride; we look a little bored.

The cultural experience that is the Bergton Fair!

Wouldn't be the fair without Smokey the Bear and a balloon!

Look at me, Papa, I have a motorcycle!