Carving Pumpkins

We carved pumpkins with the Cloward family the other night. We had a blast. We had soup & pumpkin shaped bread bowls and hot cider. Yum Yum!

Here is the crew hard at work.

Nic working on his Frankenstein.

Kaiden & Alex taking out the guts. Ewwww....gross...



Miriam & Marshyl hard at work.



Nic's Frankenstein.



Good job, Alex.



Afton painted hers.



Great job, Luke. He did this all by himself!

Marshyl's sister, Nykki's pumpkin came with an announcement - she will be a "mummy" on May 30th! Congrats Nykki & Carson!

Apples, Apples, Apples...

Apples, Apples, Apples...all I see, think about and dream about are apples! We picked apples last week and when we got home I was so sad to not get more. It seemed like we hardly got any at all before the kids got tired and it got dark. "Oh well," I thought, "we will just do what we can with what we got...anything is better than nothing."

We started making applesauce on Saturday. I have never made applesauce before. I knew it would be easy, what I didn't know was that it would take SOOOOO... long. Peeling/coring. Cooking. Grinding up. Bottling. Processing. The process seemed endless. Finally we made it to the end of the day with 35 quarts completed. But only about 1/3 of the apples used!

Marsh & the boys peeling/coring. I am so glad for my Pampered Chef Apple peeler/corer/slicer. We could NOT have done all of this by hand!

Saturday's applesauce.


On Monday I couldn't stand the thought of doing applesauce again. Especially since Marshyl was at work. So I decided that pie filling sounded a little quicker. And it was. I didn't have to cook the apples first, I just had to peel/core them, cut them up and put them in the jars. Then pour the sugary sauce over them and process. By about 2PM I had run out of rings for the jars and we had 35 quarts of pie filling done. Sounds like a good day's work and I stopped. Maybe I had gone through another 1/3 of the apples.

Monday's pie filling.



How much pie filling can one family use, right? So back to applesauce it is. Tuesday I decided that it had to be the VERY last day of these apples. I didn't care if it took me until midnight, I wasn't going to stop until every last apple was in a jar. I realized that using the blender instead of the hand held blender to puree the apples was a lot quicker. Things moved so much faster than they had on Saturday. Kaiden & Nic did the peeling/coring and I did the rest. And then I ran out of jars. We had really used every empty jar that we had in this house...and we still hadn't run out of apples! Well, enough is enough. I had 42 more quarts of applesauce and that was enough. I still had about 1/2 a bushel of apples left, but my friend across the street was happy to take them off my hands.

Tuesday's applesauce.

I am so glad to be done. Final count: 77 quarts of applesauce, and 31 quarts of pie filling (4 didn't seal, so we had apple crisp for FHE treat on Monday!)

Pickin' Apples

Uncle Paul could get all of the apples for us from work that we wanted to pick, so we went over Thursday night to pick. We had a fun time picking until Garrett got tired and it got dark. We still got a lot and are so happy to get the FREE apples!

Marsh up in the tree picking in his work clothes.

Nic helping.

The girls skipping through the orchard.

Garrett hung out and watched.

The results of all our hard work. This didn't look like very many at all to me until I started canning them. But that is another story...

Mommy's best boy!

Wonderbox

This is a Wonderbox. It is a handy thing to have on hand to go with your food storage. We are all storing things like wheat and beans, but if we were ever in a crisis situation and had limited fuel for cooking, it would be hard to cook the things that take so long to cook. Like beans. Even in my pressure cooker they take an hour.

The Wonderbox is stuffed with the pellets that you find in bean bags and is a great insulator. So here is how it works. If I wanted to cook beans, I would prep them and put them in my pressure cooker. I would then bring the cooker up to pressure and then take the pan off the heat and put it in the Wonderbox. The Wonderbox holds in the heat and the beans continue to cook all day long. In 8 hours I have perfectly cooked beans having only used enough fuel (about 10 minutes worth) to bring my pressure cooker up to pressure. Cool, huh?! You can use this with any pot, but a pressure cooker comes to a boil a lot faster and holds in the heat longer.

You can find these online for over $100, but they are so simple to make. Mine cost less that $15 to make ($9 for the fabric and $6 for the pellets) and was so easy to sew up, and those of you who know me know that I am NOT a sewer. You want to use a thicker fabric. This is denim that I bought at Wal-Mart off the bolt but you could also use flannel. The denim was about $3/yard and it takes 2.5 yards.

Anyways, I just had to share. I think this is really cool! And it is even cooler that I made it myself!

Here is the whole Wonderbox.

It has the base and a lid. Both full of the bean bag pellets.



The pressure cooker fits inside like this and then I put the top on to create the full insulation.

This is what the bottom looks like empty (not holding the pressure cooker).

Yum Yum!

I just had to share what we had for dinner the other night. It is one of our favorite things to eat. Green Chili Burritos. But these were special Green Chili Burritos. I cooked the beans in my Wonderbox (what they heck is a Wonderbox? See the next post) and made refried beans and we made the tortillas from scratch. This was SOOOOO...good. Here are the recipes if you would like to try them at your house.

Green Chili

1/2 lb. ground beef
1 can green chilies
1/4 c. flour
water

Cook the ground beef until cooked and crumbled. Sprinkle the flour onto the cooked beef and stir in. Whisk in water to make a "gravy". Start with about 3 cups of water. More can be added later if the sauce is too thick. Add the green chilies, salt & pepper. Whisk as it comes to a boil. Simmer on low for a few minutes until it is thickened. Serve over bean & cheese burritos.

Wheat Tortillas
(this is the recipe that came with our tortilla press)
(We have the VillaWare UNO Grand Wrap Flat bread maker and we LOVE it.)

1.5 c. whole wheat flour
1.5 c. unbleached flour
1 tsp. salt
1/3 c. canola oil
1 c. warm water

Combine flours together and add salt. Stir in oil until mixture resembles fine crumbs. Add water and stir until very well mixed. (I use my bread mixer to make my tortilla dough and it takes me less than 5 minutes to mix these up.) Separate dough and roll into 12 balls. Cover & let rest at least 30 minutes. Press and cook with a tortilla press or roll out with a rolling pin and cook on a hot griddle.

Refried Beans

Cook pinto & black beans (about 1 lb. total) until soft. Add 1 c. chicken stock and salt, pepper, garlic salt and blend until the right consistency is reached.

A Complaint Free World

My friend Dona works at one of the local libraries and as she was checking in books she came across a book called, "A Complaint Free World" and it intrigued her. She checked it out and then shared it with us. The book is written by Will Bowen. He is a pastor at a church in Kansas City, MO. In 2006 he encouraged his congregation to go 21 days without complaining. This has now snowballed into a world-wide phenomenon. You can find out more by reading the book or by checking out their website.

Basically the program is simple. Get the purple wristband (or a rubber band or anything that you can move from one wrist to the other). Put it on one of your wrists and every time you complain, criticize or gossip you move it to the other wrist. Every time. You continue moving it back and forth all day as you complain, criticize or gossip. Thoughts don't count. Only the things that actually come out of your mouth. The goal is to go 21 days in a row without moving your wristband. This is truly an inspired challenge. By switching the wristband back and forth it makes us aware of all of the complaining that we do. Becoming aware is the first step to change. As we become aware of the complaining and stop the complaining our thoughts will then change, changing our overall view of the world and attracting to us more positive energy.

Anyways, he explains it better than I do. This came at the perfect time in my life and I am up for the challenge. Also on the website are 10 free lesson plans for teaching this program to kids. We are going to start working on this as a family. I am starting today and will keep you posted on my progress. Of the people who have gone 21 days w/o complaining it has taken them an average of 4-6 months to complete. No matter how many days you have under your belt, if you complain, you have to start over again. It sounds like the hardest part is going the 1st full day w/o complaining. I will probably be switching my wristband every 5 seconds all day long! As I was thinking about this the other day it occurred to me that if I weren't complaining, I wouldn't have anything to say at all! I can really use this program right now in my life!

The book is really great and is a quick read. I encourage everyone to read it and try this out...or at least check out the website. It is life changing!

Garrett's New Head

Here are pictures of Garrett's new head! Surgery was Friday and all went really well. We just got home from the hospital yesterday (Monday). He is seeming more like himself every day. He has even been smiling at us again.

at the hospital before surgery...happy even though he was starving.

cute hospital jammies

top shot before surgery...the front of his head is to the bottom of the picture in both of these. The Dr. told us that he took 2 inches off of the length of his head!

top shot after surgery. They do the zig zag incision so that the scar will heal small and you can't see it through the hair after it is all healed.

profile before

profile after. the big tube of blood is the drain that they put in to drain out a lot of the fluid, so he didn't swell so much in the back. I know it is gross....sorry.

DAY 1: right after surgery in the PICU.

DAY 2:...the swelling has started.

DAY 3: Sunday. This was max swelling. Both of his eyes were swollen shut. It was really sad. He just slept most of the day. Through all of this he maintained his easy-going personality and was so great about it all.

DAY 4: This was yesterday when we got home. The swelling was going down and so only one eye was swollen shut again. He laid with that side down, so all of the fluid collected there. You can see that he was happy to be home. The kids were all happy to see him, but they wondered if we brought home the wrong baby because they said that this didn't look like their Garrett.

DAY 5: Today he looks a lot better. Most of the swelling is down. He is still a little puffy, but all of that should be gone in 1-2 more days. He looks GREAT!

Luke's 8th Birthday!

Luke turned 8 on Oct. 3rd! I can't believe he is that old already! He will be baptized on Nov. 1st. We are so proud of him. He is such a good help with the girls and he loves to play with them. He also loves putting together Bionicles with his brothers. It's hard being the youngest of the big boys, but he does great! We spent Luke's birthday in Scofield at the cabin with Grandma & Grandpa Cloward. Luke wanted to go up and fish one more time this year. They went fishing, but didn't catch anything. They still had fun visiting, singing songs and doing the "fish dance".

Here he is ready to blow out the candles on his birthday breakfast orange rolls.

Dad made him this sign.

He got a new Bionicle! And Kensi was on hand to help him open the present if he needed it. We actually had to hide all of the presents or Kensi would have opened them all. We found that out the hard way over the last few birthdays...

Birthday cake!
He told me exactly what he wanted for his cake and it turned out really cute! That is a gummy bat...he ate the whole thing!

Make a wish...
(don't ask me why Nic has an arrow stuck to his head...I have given up asking those
types of questions around here.)

more cute pics of Garrett

I know that you all LOVE pictures of Garrett...so here are some more!

Look who can sit up!

Garrett is sitting up! Look at my big boy!

Eating big boy food!

Over the past few weeks we have been trying Garrett out on some baby food. He has taken to it really fast. Here are some shots of the first couple of times...

Yummy...sweet potatoes!
(Green beans weren't such a hit, but he loved the sweet potatoes & squash.)

"I love you, daddy!"

"But I do NOT love that yucky stuff you are putting in my mouth!"

"Augh! Mommy help me!"


P.S...This poor boy came to our family after 2 girls...the only bibs we own are girlie! We will have to remedy that REALLY soon!