Everything you never wanted to know about our family and various other subjects.

Monday, September 21, 2015

Making Wood

 
These are the pics from our wood hauling days this past week.
Friday and Saturday were devoted to some serious cutting and
transporting of our winter heat source.
 
 
Dan cut the trees down.
 
 
Joseph cut them up.
 
 
The rest of us hauled it out of the pasture.


 
Timothy drove the 6-wheeler (like a madman).




 
We filled that trailer six times!
 
 
Timothy cut a little while Dan was dropping a load at home.
 
 
I caught this guy working harder than everyone else.
 
 
We borrowed a dump trailer from another homeschool family.

 
It makes unloading the highlight of the day.


 
 Not bad for a couple of days' work!



Sunday, September 20, 2015

Produce!

 
Here's us making a mad dash to keep up with produce this summer...
 

We tried cucumber bread.
(Think zucchini bread but I didn't add chocolate
chips... probably a mistake with this group of eaters.)
 
We did can one batch of salsa.
The rest of the tomatoes took up residence in the freezer,
to be cooked up later this fall and winter when the house
needs warming.
 


Lots of chopping and dicing and seeding kept everyone
busy and made this old favorite...

Cucumber salsa!
(I think I'm already missing summer.)

Saturday, September 19, 2015

Apple Picking Afternoon

On Thursday, we took a trek to Joseph and Timothy's
newest residence.
 

They weren't home so Franny checked out their deck.
 


Then we located what we had really come for...

 
while we dodged a few showers...

 
(This is the view from their front yard.)

 
we picked lots of gorgeous, sweet apples.


 
They always look better after they're in the box to go home!

 
Some people offered advice...

 
while others tasted the fresh picked produce...

 
but one guy really knows how to get the job done.

Friday, September 18, 2015

Aspen

 Aspen is the newest kitty at our house.
Not sure why but one of Clare's friends thought
a cat would make a great birthday present.
 
 
This particular cat has since become Marianna's baby.
They go on adventures together (all the way out to the shed)
and Aspen has even been known to hide from her affectionate mama
(imagine that?!)


Marianna recently asked why the kitty doesn't talk to her.
She only purrs.  What a bummer!
 


I'm including one very cute Franny pic
just because I couldn't resist this adorable face.
(And, yes, Johnny photo bombed EVERY photo in this post!)

Wednesday, September 2, 2015

FranMan at 2 and One Half

I tried for a photo shoot part way through the summer.
 
Then I remembered why I don't bother with trying to set
up photos...

What's with the squinty eyes?

This one really captures his personality,
so I guess that's as good as it gets.

Back to reality!
(I think those snazzy slippers came from
Auntie Tammie's house, if I'm not mistaken.)
 
Rock on, Little Man, rock on!

 
Favorite hobbie: licking whatever's been in the mixer lately
and eating inedibles.
He's tried Carmex, Chapstick and Blistex recently (much to his sister's chagrin).
 
Do you see the trend here?
We also had one bubble consuming incident which led
to repeated gagging in the backyard.
He made a quick recovery, though and has returned
to his favorite lip balm.
No worries, right?
 
He's also really into hats.
 
Classic picture... squinty eyes AND a hat!

That's our boy!
 


Tuesday, September 1, 2015

Up, Up and Away

Dan needed to rent some fancy machinery for a recent job,
so that evening we all got to go for a ride...
 
First some of the kids tried it out...
 
Up,
 

up,
 

and up some more.
 

Is there a panic button?
 

Interesting facial expressions!

Then I decided to try it out, too.

The view at the highest height.

Dan in his glory!

And a pretty cool view of our garden boxes, too.
(And the outdoor biffy, which is gone now,
much to Gabriel's disappointment.)