Summers end

The week after vacation was full of catching up and weeding and doing corn...

One afternoon Emmy insisted that they needed to have a party with lemon shakeups for a snack.  "I'll do it all, you don't have to do anything!"  Except make the shakeups.  :P

I saved tin cans so that the girls could try making tin can lanterns like the pioneers.

It was harder than it looked.

Some needed more help than others- this one neeeeeded me to hold the nail and I'm not sure how my fingers survived.

We used their home dipped candles inside them.

Quick trip to the farm to get some sweetcorn... which she insisted on eating on the way home.  haha.  Dad let the girls pick a few ears too, which they loved.

They were super excited to shuck corn and were strangely disappointed to discover that grandpa had shucked it in the field for me.... and nobody wanted to help get the stray silks.  *sigh*  I shall remind them of that this winter when they are complaining about the ones I missed ending up on their plates. 

So usually if I do corn at the farm Dad picks two seed bags full and Mom helps and we split the corn.  I'm not sure what I was thinking bringing home two bags full just for us..... it ended up being twice as much corn as I usually freeze.  :P  And I was very tired. 

In this years episode of garden misadventures, not only did Bob plant a "sweet" pepper variety that turned out to include serrano peppers (even hotter than jalapenos), I planted watermelon seeds TWICE.  And grew cucumbers. *sigh*  So we had a bunch of cucumbers that nobody really wanted.  Bob suggested I make sweet pickles, which is fine, except that we don't hardly eat pickles and Bob can't eat anything raw.  A lot of recipes for sweet pickles just sealed the jars with hot brine (since the pickling is what preserves them) and don't fully cook the cucumbers...  but then I found my Great Grandma Carrie's sweet pickle recipe in ye old Lester Cookbook.  :D  

 

 Lots of ingredients I don't keep on hand- alum, oil of cloves and cinnamon.... ha.  Also I am not even a quarter of the homemaker she was so I used my food processor to cut very imperfect slices and did not core them. :P  But 11ish days, and much complaining about the "horrible" smell from my lovely children later we have 3 quarts of sweet pickles that no one will probably eat. At least, if it takes us 10 years to get through them they'll still probably be good. 

The older three got to go to kids night at church and were soooo excited about it. They brought back some cute pens and some interesting wood creations.  :)  (somebody donated a fortunes worth of scrap wood...)  

One super hot afternoon I burned the stick pile and the girls helped me cook supper over the fire. 

We made beef stew, corn bread, and then Emmy insisted on making pigs in blankets (not very pioneer like, but whatever). 

The stew turned out fine, we burned the cornbread pretty bad, and the pigs in blankets didn't really cook through (hooray for ovens).  It was all edible though, even though everyone else refused to eat the cornbread because it tasted like smoke. 

Bob's Grandpa Beutel died early the morning of the 7th.  One of the best parts of marriage is the bonus grandparents. I'm thankful we don't have to say goodbye forever.
 

 Sunday was a long day with church in the morning, then visitation in the afternoon.  The girls went back to our house with Grace and Eden for a while before supper at the church. The funeral was Monday... as an introvert all of the people and emotions really exhaust me so I definitely needed a nap.   

Also, our kids are weird but they help to keep the mood from getting too heavy around here.  Discussing how old Grandpa was- "wow, he was really old!  He must have been really good when he was a kid! (In a "that your days may be long on the earth" sense)  Other child- "it's so hard to be good when you have 3 annoying sisters!"  

Loud whisper as we walked into the visitation- "will the carcass be here?"  hahahahaha ummmmmm I hope no one heard that!!  

We missed part of my families staycation, but we met everyone at U. Roy's pond Monday evening.  The kids swam and fished.

Emmy was not so sure about fish at first. :D

 But she just kept catching them and catching them!  She says she counted 15 and I believe her- I've never taken that many fish off of hooks before in my entire life.  Not that I fish much.  

Cecily caught quite a few too- this one was one of the bigger ones of the evening.

 Cadence caught one too!  She wasn't as interested and was off to the playground. 

 

 Miri just watched. She couldn't decide if she wanted to swim or not so I just let her run around in her diaper.

 Mom wanted to take the kids to bicycle safety town even though it was going to be super hot.  We joined them for awhile.  The girls liked it but wished it wasn't so hot. :) We spent the rest of the day at the farm swimming in the cow tank with cousins.

 They had "The Nutcracker" at full volume one morning and were acting it out.  :D 

 Cadence is starting kindergarten....  aaahhh.  But that means we get to go shopping for a first day dress and she gets to graduate to a church purse- no more toy bag!  She is, um, interesting to shop with.  She has to touch everything and wants one of everything and this is why I never take them shopping.  haha.

 Miriel was very sweetly carrying around her dolly: "Don't worwy.  I gotchu." 

 I maybe got myself a new shirt.  :P

 So we've had a box of 'face paint tattoos' floating around and they all decided they needed them on one day.  And then promptly decided they didn't like how they felt and tried to take them right back off again.  Poor Cadence scrubbed and scrubbed and then I scrubbed...some of her skin off.  ooops.  People kept asking at church how she hurt herself.  :P  She didn't, I'm just a bad Mom.  

Last night we dug potatoes.  Considering how many rodents we've, um, disposed of this summer there wasn't a ton of damage.  We still didn't get as many nice potatoes as Bob was hoping for.  haha.  I'm more of a it's fun to grow things and eat our own produce but other than sweet corn I can survive on boughten produce kind of gardener so I'm not too disappointed. 

 I never got around to thinning the carrots so it was fun to see how many actually grew and weren't super tiny!  Miri is super helpful in the garden. Or something.  She was wading through the tomato plants and got thoroughly covered in yellow pollen and picked a bunch of green ones.  "I pick it! Mato!"  

And tonight we went to meet the teacher night and we have to get up for school tomorrow.  Mur.  Where did summer go?  I am not a morning person and I do not like alarm clocks.  But they are super excited and a little bit more structure is probably good for all of us.  

Blessings.