What I've Been Up To

Things have been a bit busy around here lately.  And a bit crazy.

For example, Josh had a tantrum this morning about getting his Kindergarten shots.  Not because he had to get them, but because he couldn't remember getting them and was sure he'd get in trouble if he went to school without them.  It took me a good 10 minutes to convince him that he had gotten all of his shots last year and that he was all vaccinated and that the school knew this.  Stupid morning news story putting ideas into my kid's loony head.

Then he came home with a fever.  After a bath he seems to be feeling a bit better, but I suspect he'll be home from school tomorrow.  Poor kid.

Then there's Cole.  He now likes to sit out on the front porch and watch the cars go buy.  He's like a dog, only instead of barking and chasing them he stands up and shouts "Look!  A blue car!" or "Look!  A white van!"  I guess everyone's got to have a hobby.

The weather is turning early this year.  We were one degree away from a frost the other morning, so I went crazy and picked all our tomatoes, green or not.  I tried making that fake raspberry jam that used green tomatoes and raspberry jell-o, but it didn't set and after I tasted it I realized I didn't really want my jam to taste like raspberry jell-o.  (However, if you don't mind raspberry jell-o flavored jam, I recommend the recipe.  You really couldn't tell it had green tomatoes in it!)

This morning I canned 11 pints of green tomato relish, courtesy of Elinor Frost, who is my step-mother's mother.  To be honest, I haven't tried it yet, but it smelled pretty tasty!  I can't figure out what I'm gonna do with all that relish; eat a lot of hot dogs, I guess.

Lance said we should serve it on our donuts this year at our annual Halloween party, with a slogan along the lines of "The best tasting donut you will ever have will be the one you have after the relish-donut."  The slogan needs a little work, but I think he's onto something there...

Speaking of canning, which we kind of were, I've done a lot of it this summer.  Not as much as I would have liked, since the late spring frost killed off all the blueberries, peaches, and apples.  But I did manage to can a million bottles of jalapeno jelly, Great-Grandma Heaton's chili sauce, fire roasted salsa, pickled peppers, and a few jars of strawberry balsamic thyme jam.  All of which, to toot my own horn, is pretty tasty.  Hooray for canning! I'm feeling very domesticated.

On Monday I got all of my pumpkin decorations out.  No kidding, each child and Lance lifted up the lid to the cookie jar and asked where the cookies were.  Today I finally got around to filling it.  I used my cousin's Pumpkin Swirl Sugar Cookies recipe, and they're pretty darn tasty.

I made the mistake of leaving Cole alone in the kitchen with the cookies cooling on the counter.  I came back in 30 minutes later and EIGHT cookies were missing.  These are not small cookies, people.  Big surprise, he wouldn't eat an afternoon snack or dinner.

What was I working on while the cookies were cooling?  If you answered "A Pikachu hat", you are correct.  And a little scary.  Yes, Spencer has decided he wants to be Ash Ketchum, Cole is going to be Pikachu and Josh is going to Raichu, who is, apparently, Pikachu evolved.  Who knew?  (My kids, apparently.)  I have no idea how I am going to pull these costumes off, but I decided that Pikachu and Raichu would start with hats.  As you can see, Pikachu is done and pretty darn cute.  I have to admit that never in my wildest dreams of motherhood did I ever suspect I would be making a Pikachu Pinata (still fun to say!) and a Pikachu hat in the same year.  Or at all.

Then there's Tessie.  She's plugging away with her First Steps therapy.  And by plugging away I mean willing to do the exercises for anyone but me, which is a bit of an issue since I'm the one home with her ALL DAY. That child...  Notice the dog tags in her mouth.  I had to throw away all the bead necklaces we had because of a rather unfortunate pooping in the bathtub while the necklaces were in there incident (and they were getting gross anyway), so she found the dog tags and has adopted them as her own.  That girl loves accessories.

 
Tess is still taking her time in pulling herself up to stand and walking.  I would guesstimate that she's about 9 months behind most kids her age in that department.  (But not in the language/cognitive skills - that girl in smart and lets you know it!)

Tess's therapist and I have decided that a big part of Tess's problem is that she just doesn't want anyone to tell her what to do.  She'll climb and crawl when she's dang well ready, which makes are therapy sessions extra fun.  Fortunately, today she was in a fairly good mood and cooperated - even climbing up most of the stairs, which surprised everyone!  She then spent the rest of the afternoon trying to climb up and down the stairs, but refusing any help, just about giving her poor mother a heart attack.

As if that weren't enough, last weekend I hosted Craft Group at my house.  It's a night where women get together and work on a craft/project.  There's one selected for each month, but you can also just bring something you want to work on.  This time I chose freezer paper stencil shirts.  You just cut out the shape you want on the freezer paper, iron it to the shirt, and then spray a little bleach on.  After a few fails, I think I got some pretty great shirts!

This raven one is mine for Halloween.  It's extra spooky because I hate fake birds, with their wee beady eyes...

This zombie one is Spencer's.  It's pretty awesome, if I do say so myself.

I also made some regular bleach pen shirts.  I made one like this for both Spencer and Josh. That Pokemon in the middle is named Axew (pronounced "Axe-shew).  HA! Axew a question! Pokemon humor!  Shoot me now!  (However, this was wildly popular in the elementary school set.)

 I made this shirt for Josh.  He specifically said he wanted Frankenstein on his shirt.  Unfortunately for Josh, we discovered that bleaching doesn't work very well on polyester blend shirts.  (If you're gonna do it, look for only 100% cotton shirts.)

 Tess got a cutie-patootie owl onesie.  Ignore the crumbs and other meal-time detritus around the the shirt; it hadn't been washed yet and I knew if I waited for the wash cycle I'd never get a picture of it.

 And lest you think I ignored Cole, I didn't.  He was wearing the pumpkin shirt I made him today, but wouldn't hold still for a picture.  Then he got poop on it, which, again, gives a pretty good idea of what life is like around here lately.