Fall fun

 rolling down the hill

 

Ferndale Homecoming (that's Ian & Jenny - in HC court!)

 

 

Jumping in leaves

***

Soon to come...picking out pumpkins, Halloween parade (to & from which we will be taking the long-promised Incline ride), and trick-or-treating.  The costumes are done and they are CUTE!!!  I'm sure there's more stuff going on this week, but the calendar is very hard to read right now.  Abby took the liberty of writing in her "special classes" for school - the ones that rotate each day...

and for November...

"...won't Mom be pleased." - Mercer Mayer

A Betty Crocker Moment

To do: rest of laundry, fridge (didn't do yesterday), and figure out what people are getting for Christmas.  I'm making a lot of things this year, so I have to start on them...like yesterday. I have two free hours this morning while Nollie is at preschool.  We'll see what happens.

So...on to the fall activities that have been going on around here.  Here was the idea: mini caramel apples.  What could be cuter.  Especially given that I kind of...ate...enough caramels out of the bag to make it not a full enough bag to do regular-sized apples.  Not all in one sitting, mind you...just here and there...I felt pretty sheepish about it if that makes anyone feel any better.  So anyway, what could be cuter, easier, more kid-friendly than these little mini-apples you can make? 

Certainly not these...

 

There.  It's out there.  This is what happened to our Betty Crocker moment.  I guess my first red flag was when the melon-baller wasn't turning out nice little spherical mini-apples.  I guess that's why it's not called an apple-baller.  But no matter...they would still taste good, right?  I had that caramel so smooth and silky-looking, it was a thing of beauty.  All I had to do was get the sticks for the kids to poke into the little misshapen apple thingies.  I turned the burner down waaaay low, left the stove for about 7 seconds, and came back to what looked like a layer of tar on the bottom of my saucepan.  And bubbling caramel with little tar bits all through it.  But NO MATTER, I could just dip the apples in the good parts of the caramel, right?  Sure!  So, at this point, at the dipping stage, it hit me why you don't normally see caramel apples that have the skin off.  DUH!  The caramel doesn't stick to the inside so well, or even at all.  I had to take a paper towel and dry these stupid things off as well as I could, and THEN dip them in whatever caramel I could salvage BEFORE it got too cool to coat the apples.  I had to reheat it once, which was kind of the proverbial nail in the coffin.  With Abby watching me try to dip these things, asking me questions like, "is it supposed to look like that?" and "is the caramel going to taste good?" I was fighting the urge to just burst into tears.  But I held it together, gave up on the apples, and got the kids some sprinkles from the cupboard that they could roll their (un-carameled) apples in and eat.  They thought it was just awesome.  :)

aggravation

I am so aggravated today.  "People" (ahem) have been making  me feel angry, frustrated, USED, unappreciated...you name it!  Instead of venting about it all (which is what comes naturally to me)...I want to share this.  I read it a few months ago when I was feeling this way and it really was like being hit with a gong - I just "got it."  It's from a Kay Arthur devotional...it's amazing how God can even use a mere 10 minutes a day...I read this one often...

"Have your circumstances been difficult lately?  Are you feeling uptight about everything that's going wrong?

When you let the worries of life get to you, it can affect your relationships with others.  You become frustrated, pound things, set them down hard, or slam them!  You're tempted to vent the frustration of difficult circumstances in one way or another on a person or an object.  You find yourself wanting to chew out the kids, kick the cat or throw out the dog, hide and glare behind the newspaper, or just tune out the family and turn on the TV - loud!  Or perhaps you only want to slam the bedroom door, crawl into bed, and pull the blankets over your head.

Beloved, this is not the way to handle frustration!  When things get difficult, God says, 'Let your gentle spirit be known to all men.  The Lord is near.'  (Phil. 4:5). 

God is there, my friend.  Shut your mouth, and willfully give your frustrations to Him.  Then take a deep breath and let the Spirit take control.

Today, Father, I take all my frustrations and worries and drop them at Your feet.  Breathe Your peace into my heart so that I can respond in love to those around me rather than letting circumstances rule my life."

What a relief to be able to "let the Spirit take control."  God knows what's wrong in my life and He knows how to fix it. 

the anti-climactic first post!

Well hi!  I created this blog to put all the stuff on that I don't want to bore people on Facebook with, if that makes any sense.  I think more people should have blogs for that very reason.

Anyway, to start the ball rolling, here's my to-do list for the day (and this is always in addition to my "regular chores" which are, indeed, a chore)....  This is an actual list that I wrote down over coffee this morning.  I do this almost every day.  Abby (my dazzlingly clever 6 year old) has even gotten in on it.  Sometimes she adds things to my list, and sometimes she makes her own (adorable) list.  This is my way of making sure that I don't sit around and be lazy all day, which is my total natural inclination.  When I was a new mommy, I would put things on it like, "brush teeth" and "get dressed," just so I would remember to do those things, and also so I could have something to cross off and feel that I'd accomplished something.  I'm proud to say that those things are pretty much automatic now and I've moved up to the big leagues.  Or at least the pony leagues.  ;)  So here it is, in no particular order:

Laundry
Contact MOPS girls
Mail the thing
Clean out fridge
Make bread
Call Trisha about meals
Call Andrea
See about Lia Sophia people, call Helen

Try to contain your excitement.  (That's an instruction to any hapless readers, not an item on my list.)

In reading other people's blogs, I have noticed that they're a lot more interesting with pictures, so let me put up one of my adorable kids!  (I know.......but mine really are adorable.)


See?  ;)  That's Abby and Nolan at their birthday luau last month.  Their b-days are 2 years and 8 days apart, so we usually have a big family & friends party for both of them at the same time.  I think this year was the funnest (?) one ever!  Kids were everywhere.  It was a blast!

Abby is 6 & in kindergarten, and Nolan is 4 & in preschool (2 mornings a week). More on the kids later. 

At the moment I have to....well you see my list up there!