Fall 2014: This and That...

Now that snow if officially on the ground here in Aitkin (mark the date...it's November 5th, 2014), I thought I would share some of our fall photos. It was a short fall here in the North, but as always, we tried our hardest to make the most of it all!

We were fortunate enough to get some time to play in the leaves...

(Olivya dictated her style this day. Note the pajama pants, 3 pig-tails, a bib over the jacket, and I'm pretty sure she is wearing 2 different shoes too). 

More leaves...and a nice fall day for an attempted photo shoot (though the girls were too crazy, so these are literally the only 3 shots that we got). Props to my very talented husband for these pictures and many pictures that you find on this blog. 

We spent a fun day at Afton Apple Orchard with Gramma, Papa & Brady picking apples and enjoying a great fall day! 

We spent our 2nd year in a row at a waterpark hotel for MEA break weekend. Both Adelyn & Olivya LOVED it! 

And on the work side of things, this is always a very busy but very fun time of the year as we prepare to confirm our confirmation students! I had the privilege of confirming 19 students this year and it is such a fun group of kids! (They were impressed that their pastor was so good at taking "selfies"!) 

And I completed my last project of food from my garden! Thanks to my cousin Holly who walked me through this process step by step one night, I was able to make 8 jars of homemade salsa from the tomatoes from my garden that I had previously frozen. 

Yes, it has been a great fall! Michael also took his students on a mission trip to Jamaica for a week, we had a couple of 70 degree days during the fall that we got to enjoy, and Adelyn & Olivya constantly keep us on our toes (some minutes they play GREAT together, and other minutes it's a constant battle/test of parenting)!

Fall has come and gone. We are now bracing for what the winter months may bring;) 

September 2014: Garden Fun

We officially cleared out our garden this weekend and over the past few weeks, we have had quite the harvest! And a pretty darn good one at that! Considering I'm a first time Gardener that didn't even know the word "till" until I started to get into this stuff, I would say I'm pretty pleased with what we have accomplished this summer/fall! It's been fun to watch the garden grow, do some weeding (or not), and see the vegetables start to grow and finally ripen so that we can pick them. We picked veggies from the garden on a daily basis over the past couple of weeks, and tried our best to not let  our large harvest go bad. 

First of all, as a reminder, this is where we started:

And we watched it grow...

And Grow some more...

And finally things started to ripen...

And before we knew it, we had more tomatoes, peppers, jalapeño peppers, lettuce and squash than we knew what to do with!

So...we ate lots of fresh veggies straight out of the garden, cooked and froze all the squash to have for the winter, made 3 big batches of stuffed peppers and froze them, made a huge double batch of homemade tomato soup AND homemade potato soup and froze it all in individual containers mostly to use for lunches, made a massive batch of stuffed jalapeño peppers and froze them to pull out and use whenever, and cleaned and froze over 5 gallon-size zip lock bags of tomatoes to be used in the near future to make salsa, pasta sauce, etc. 

Both of our freezers are full and we have been enjoying the goods of our garden, and will continue to enjoy them for quite some time!! I would say year 1 of our gardening experience has been a success and we are looking forward to gardening again next year, with of course adapting some things that we learned along the way (aka that one tomato plant produces more than just 5 tomatoes each!!) 

September 2014: Duluth Day

A couple of weeks ago, we were supposed to go camping with some friends up in Itasca, and as the weekend got closer, the forecast got worse. And Cold. And it was the first weekend in the forecast that we were scheduled for the nights to hit 25-30 degrees. And since we didn't have access to a camper that weekend (we were planning on tenting it) and given the fact that our children refuse to keep blankets on them when they sleep, we opted out (sadly) of the camping weekend, and instead decided to go to Duluth for a day instead.

It was no camping, but it sure was a fun day! We played at a park and threw rocks in the rivers/stream (and this is right in the city of Duluth! Amazing!)

And we headed down to Canal park for some ice cream and shopping and it just happened that a HUGE boat was heading out of the harbor so we rushed down to wish it farewell on it's journey...

(once the ship sounded it's horn, Olivya got a bit weary of the whole thing)

And after indulging in some great burritos, we headed home and called it a night. There's just something about Duluth that keeps me coming back over and over again...and it never gets old:) A fun "replacement" day:) 

October 2013: Fall Fun

Just a mosh-posh of pictures today from some good ol' fall fun....

Playing in the leaves...

Como Zoo with friends...

Happy Fall everyone! Enjoy it while you can!!