Halloween Festivities

Our Halloween fun started Friday night. We headed over to the school carnival and the girls had tons of fun. Ash quickly ditched us for her friends.

Ash and Cali, Cali was able to come back up for the carnival. They have sure missed each other tons!

Ash and Lily

Face painting

Ash really wanted to be Trixie the Halloween fairy from the Fairy books she reads. I was surprised at how easy it was to find orange wings, I never thought it would happen. I think she turned out pretty cute!

All three of them

Kaite had a hard time deciding what to be until we found Bumblebee, then it was a no brainer!

Kami was the cutest little bunny, who never holds still for photos!

Saturday we headed up to the trunk or treat. Kami got the idea down very quickly. She eventually started just walking to the front of the crowd and holding out her bag and saying trick or treat.

Marianne took the girls to a few houses later that evening, then they just answered the door all night at my families house, since we don't get trick or treaters.
Today was crazy hair/hat day. We had fun spiking Kaite's short hair.

Ash wore Mar's hat from Cali

Kami had to try it on too.

This last pic is just one Ky took one night when he went to check on the girls. Kaite fell asleep reading her book! They sure love to read.

We had a good weekend the girls where so excited especially Kaite she had to try on her costume at least once a day! Kami hopped around the house telling all of us she was a bunny. They are now planning costumes for next year!

Happenings

Here are the latest happenings from the past couple of weeks. We have all our produce out of the garden and I have been madly canning, freezing, and dehydrating things. We have canned 20 jars of salsa and would have had more had we not ate an entire pot (with help) of the first batch. These are all the tomatoes I have left to do. They are turning pretty quickly now (this was taken two days ago). I decided to stick them all on the table with newspaper under them and in the sun, it worked very well.

We have also canned 21 jars of applesauce and are in the process of drying apples. We made 16 jars of plum jam and dehydrated some of those too. I have been spending the past couple of days blanching and freezing carrots- I am about half way done. I have also been drying onions and now our house smells like dried onions- yuk. Here are the onions and half the carrots.

Here are the funniest looking carrots from the garden.

But this was the best thing we have found so far. Kami was thrilled that we found a mickey mouse potato growing. It is all about that mouse around here!

Kaite got her white ribbon in gym and only has to get her back-hip circle down to move up to level 2. Way to go Kaite she is quite the gymnast! She was so proud of herself too!

Missy came up and took family pics of us a couple of weekends ago. Trying to get pictures with three kids is near to impossible, but we got some really good ones. I think this first one is my favorite, I love the lighting.

Me and my hubby!

Us girls

Classic Kaite, Ky thinks we should blow this one up and put it on the wall!

We had a fun night and enjoyed a nice dinner with Missy and Briant afterward.
Ash doing chubby bunny with grapes.

Last Saturday we went and carved pumpkins with Ky's family. Ash carved her own this year by herself!

Ky brought some sort of power tool and totally cheated! But his mickey pumpkin turned out great!

The finished products, all except Mahon and Cindy's go here to vote on theirs.

We also helped pick apples, my monkeys!

Chris juggled the apples.

Also last Saturday we got Kami's ears pierced! She has been so good going number 2 in the potty that we thought it would encourage her even more and it worked. She has had one accident since (at night) and has been in her big girl pants for almost a week now! She is doing awesome and loves her earrings. She did cry a little bit at first, I had numbed her ears up a little, but as soon as she saw them she loved them. We did pierce with Minnie and will move over to Mickey as soon as we can- they didn't have Mickey earrings to pierce with, but she still loves her potty prize!

We are also totally ready for Halloween around here and the girls are so excited. I have also started my Christmas list and shopping, since it needs to be done early this year. The girls have enjoyed being at home more. I caught Kami jumping on Kaite three times this morning and would just smile at me and say "hi mom" when I would see her, stinker!
Me and Ky enjoyed a nice date night last weekend and went and saw Red, which I highly suggest. The movie was hilarious and had an all star cast.
We finally got our tickets for London and I have been stressed out about it, we aren't coming home when I wanted and now I hope I get home on time. We waited a little too long and all the flights were booking so fast, I guess we are lucky to be coming home when we are. I am not going to post the dates for safety reasons most everyone already knows anyway. I also got my dress for the wedding and I love it!
I also finally got my flu shot this week, time really got away from me. I also got the DTAP booster and my arm has been just a bit sore from that one. We got our first bit of snow the other day and some of it has stuck around for us. I am not quite ready for the cold.
This ended up being a bit longer than I thought, hopefully I can get Halloween pics posted in a timely manner!

Craziness!

Okay so it has been forever since I have posted and only cause we have been crazy busy around here. I realized yesterday that it was Thursday and couldn't believe the week had gone by so fast! The girls went back to school Monday after two weeks of spud harvest, and truth be told I was glad. They have been fighting like crazy, it is good for them to get back to their friends. We spent the weeks of spud harvest like this.

Rollerblading

Picking veggies and harvesting them. We got three five gallon buckets of tomatoes when I picked them and only about half a bucket were red. I am now trying to get them to turn so I can can salsa. We picked all our peppers before it froze (I was out in the rain and got totally soaked).

The girls spent some time dancing with Marianne when she came to stay for a few days.

This is the funniest video ever! I laugh so hard every time I see it. Kaite is hilarious!

We also took a trip to Logan and stayed with George for the night then brought Mar home with us. We stopped at Tastee Treat along the way and Ash had a grilled cheese space burger. She kept saying "nope I have never been here before" I beg to differ. They have the best shakes ever! And check out all the bracelets and rings, they are those goofy ones that keep their shape, the girls totally love them.

We had fun hanging out with George and seeing his new apartment. He is living like a bachelor though and has nothing (ie only four spoons)! That was a fun little road trip for me and the girls. We hit a major storm on the way home and at one point we were only going 30 mph, it was nasty.

But the girls spent most of spud harvest reading for their read-a-thon. They both did very well. Ash read 1895 minutes and Kaite read 965 minutes. They both got prizes for all their reading.
Kaite took second in her class and got a gift certificate for books at the book fair. I should also mention that the majority of her reading she did by herself. She is reading so well!

Ash took first in her class and got the top prize of riding in the firetruck to get ice cream during school. She was so happy. She really tried and read so much. At one time she checked out like 19 books from the library and was reading 3 a day. Way to go girls!

Kami spent spud harvest being two! We also visited the doc and he was very encouraging (not) and said "well she will one day just magically decide she is potty trained". Yep the potty training was discouraging. She knows when she needs to go and knows how she just doesn't want to. Most of the time she will stay dry unless she is busy doing something then she doesn't care, she is so much like Kaite!

Ky and I spent spud harvest pulling our hair out! The girls got so sick of each other and we were so busy, not the best combination. We did enjoy a nice night out with Chad and Becca. We played a very amusing game of mini golf and got steak. Then we picked plums and pears in the freezing cold, which means that the next couple of days I spent making jam and dehydrating them, I am still working on this! We did manage to harvest a bunch of our stuff I do still need to do onions, potatoes, and carrots- next weeks projects!
Now the highlight of spud harvest!

Ky got sprayed by a skunk!
Yep, the day after we got home from Logan and Mar's first night with us, Ky went to leave for work at 6:30 am and stepped out onto the deck and their he was. Ky got it so bad! The whole house stunk and we all woke up to skunk smell! Mar threatened to go home, but went downstairs with the girls instead. I crawled in bed with Kami and we were able to contain most of the smell to the upstairs. We spent the next day scrubbing and running to walmart for candles and febreeze. We did pretty good, the vinegar and XO seemed to work the best. I threw out Ky's clothes (well I thought I had) but it turns out some of his whites got thrown in the laundry basket. That took four washes and a lot of bleach to get that smell out! Every now and then I get a whiff of it, nastiest smell ever! Ky was able to get the smell off after a couple of showers, tomato juice (doesn't work), and finally vinegar. He said he felt so bad, we all thought it was pretty funny once we didn't have to smell it! He does now look before he opens the deck door and I laugh every time!
What a crazy couple of weeks and it isn't over. Today I am going to finish drying the plums, can applesauce, make fresh salsa, and do something with my zucchini. Next week carrots, onions, and potatoes. I am sure I left out some stuff we did. We did have a fun couple of weeks even though they flew by.

Harvest Time

We have definitely been keeping busy this past week of spud harvest. First an update on Kami. She is fine. We took her sling off a couple of days ago and she is healing great. I will say that those first three or four days were really rough. The poor girl kept bumping it and using it, then she would cry and get frustrated. I was frustrated because I couldn't figure out what she wanted and she just didn't understand, those first few days were really bad! After that we did what I thought we should do all along and wrapped her up, that worked. I think we wrapped her up for like four days and she healed enough that it doesn't hurt now. She is still very tender when you touch that collar bone and every now and then it bothers her, but mostly she is fine and back to her old self. We have now hit the potty training hard. I got rid of all diapers/pullups and we are cold turkeying it. She is doing awesome and has only had a few accidents at nap time. I hope I can hold out a few more days!

We have been harvesting the garden the past week. On Monday we canned 5 boxes of peaches, 44 jars worth. Ash was my peach peeler and an awesome helper.

We have also been picking tomatoes. We have tons of big giant green ones perfect for salsa if they ripen in time.

Freezing jalapenos

Making 26 jars of freezer jam. We made raspberry/peach, strawberry/peach, and strawberry.

Kaite was my peach peeler this time. Thanks Julie for the peaches they were perfect!

Ash was taking pictures while we were making jam and this is what I found.

I finally updated our pictures on the wall. Thanks Missy for the cute photos! Her link here.

I refinished our nightstands in the bedroom. They were so ugly before. I should have spent a little more time on them but they turned out good. I like them.

Saying goodbye to friends. Cali is moving this week and Ash is devastated. They have been best friends since they met.

We have also been catching up on things around the house and I had a girls night with Marianne this past week, I needed that. And we also had two more big events last Sunday. Sunday was Chelsea's blessing and the girls' primary program and since they overlapped we had a chaotic morning. Me Kyle and Kami drove down to the blessing and left right after for the program. We made it just in time and the girls did great. After all that we had the luncheon at the barn. Kami had fun taking pictures with Briant.

Kaite enjoyed holding and just looking at Chelsea. I enjoyed holding her.

The girls had fun playing with their cousins.

It was a fun busy weekend. We still need to harvest carrots and then head down to Logan to pick up Marianne at George's, it will be another busy week.