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!!) 

June 2014: My first Garden

I just planted my first vegetable garden this week (with the help of my mom - thank you mom!!...and my husband who is the best darned tiller in all of Aitkin County). I have never planted a garden, I've had no experience with a garden..heck...I don't think I've ever even watered a garden! so for the past few months I've been talking to a lot of people to get ideas, suggestions, and tips (including my cousin Traci who has the hilton of all vegetable gardens! (Thanks Traci!)).

So I booked my mom to come up for a few days so that we could get started. Unfortunately, I didn't get started early enough to plan my own seeds (which have to be done inside anyway) so we set out to buy already sprouted veggies to plan in the garden...

(P.S...these two above pictures pretty much sums up my girls lately. Olivya is totally a go-with-the-flow kind of girl and just loves whatever life brings her. Adelyn is almost 3 and life just seems so hard for her! Everything is a struggle or a whining moment for her...not a fan of this stage). 

After buying our plants and prepping the garden (weeding it and tilling it - which my mom and husband did most of the work on actually), the garden was looking ready to go...

And then I mapped out where I wanted what to go, and we went to town digging and planting...

In the garden we planted tomatoes (2 different kinds), cucumbers, lettuce, asparagus, carotts, green beans, squash, red, yellow and green bell peppers, and jalapeno peppers! Yum!! Can't wait for the harvesting to begin

 

let it Grow...let it Grow... (sung to the tune of Frozen's Let it Go...let it go...which has been sung way too much in our house hold lately).