Family Night @ Hee Haw Farms!

Thanks to our wonderful dentist Dr. Jones who gave our family tickets to Hee Haw Farms to enjoy all the festivities and dinner! Despite the cold temperature, the outing was much fun! The kids started with the animal train ride followed by a hay wagon ride that blew a tire half way out in the middle of a corn field. We decided it was a blessing in disguise since it helped circulate and move the blood through our bodies with the continuous bumpy ride back:)! The girls LOVED the giant gunny sack slides! It was a cold quick ride down but they insisted doing it over and over again! Adam and I wondered how much frozen snot it would take plastered all over their faces before they had had enough:)! The corn maze was a fabulous wind barrier and I didn't care if we never found our way out! We quickly realized Kourtney was blessed with an internal compass! A few weeks earlier I had been through the maze with the young women in our ward. It took us over an hour trying to find our way out and even at that we had to have someone come in and get us so we could get out. As Kourt was leading us with her flash light in hand it seemed like only minutes before we were out! Where was that girl a few weeks earlier:)?! Despite the cold it was a fun family night! Thanks Dr. Jones!

Carving Pumpkins!

Once again we turned our pumpkins into Jack-O-Lanterns and what fun it was! Adam and I thought we would end up doing the majority of the work ,but to our surprise the girls seemed to have out grown the "yucky!! I don't want to touch it" this year and dove right in:)! To our surprise there was hardly anything in them! Mainly just seeds! We're not sure if it was because they were so large in size or what? The girls loved every minute of it! There was even throwing a few seeds in some one's hair or wiping goo on some one's arm that made for a good laugh! Now it's just putting a candle in them and watching them glow!

Makell's Halloween Party!

Makell invited a few friends over for a Halloween Party this week. Makell had heard that Kourtney and Kaitlyn were having parties at school and asked if she could have a party at home with some her her very best friends! The witche's brew was a big hit! They all sat around laughing and giggling. They loved blowing the "smoke" and tried to catch glimpses of the bats, spiders, and skeletons that infested the brew! Yummy! They made a few crafts witch included a popcorn witch hand, a ghost sucker, colored Halloween pictures, decorated cupcakes, and watched "The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown". I am so grateful we live in an area with such great friends and families for our kids to play with! Makell had a ball with her friends and had to tell her sisters all about it as soon as they walked through the door after school. HAPPY HALLOWEEN! I absolutely LOVE being a stay at home mom and experiencing these fun things with the kiddos! :)

Fall Time Fun!

I love Fall! I love the crisp cool morning and evening air and still have nice warm sunny days! I love the beautiful colors that change before your eyes that make for such a beautiful scenery! I think one of the favorites by the kiddos are all the leaves that fall to the ground! To them this means FUN! I have so many fun memories of playing in the leaves when I was a child! Today Adam trimmed the bushes and the kids and I raked the leaves into a pile. I love watching them laugh and giggle as they cover each other in leaves. Shortly after, the wind started blowing and it looks as if we hadn't even raked! I guess this means we are not done playing in the leaves! :)

Pumpkin Picking!

My dad called me on Monday and told us that one of his good friends that plants & harvests pumpkins every year was going to have a "pumpkin party" for close friends and their families. All the kids could pick a pumpkins of their choice FREE of charge. With all those pumpkins how do you even begin to decide which one you want? Well, for our children they ran off in search for their perfect pumpkin! We quickly realized that their meaning of the perfect pumpkin was the biggest one they could find and the farthest from the car! On top of that it was extremely windy! After three long trips across the field carrying a pumpkin on his shoulders Adam was spent. I decided I would weigh these monsters and see how large they really were. The smallest one weighed in at 52.4 lbs! The largest one weighed 64 lbs. That is twice as much as Makell weighs! I totally think she could crawl inside that thing! The kids were sooooo excited! I think Adam and I froze our brain in that cold wind. What were we thinking letting them pick such large ones?! Can you imagine what cleaning these things out will be like?! To top it all off the girls hate pumpkin guts!

SOLD on the Square Foot Garden!

I am SOLD on the square foot garden! I decided to post this so I can compare to future years and note or log lessons of all my trial and ere. Before spring I had heard so many people talk about the square foot garden and it really sparked my interest. I thought I would give it a shot and see how it worked. I went to Home Depot purchased wood and made the boxes myself. I calculated the cost of buying it premixed or mixing all the different soils myself and found that buying it was 15.00 more and thought it was well worth it after talking to some that mixed it their selves. After I planted my young plants I was a little nervous and have to admit somewhat sceptical.















It seemed like in no time the plants were taking off and growing like crazy! I absolutely loved the fact that their were no weeds to pull:)! One change for next year is I will put all the tomato plants in the back but closest to the apple tree. I had a cucumber plant there and it just didn't do as well as I had hoped. The other cucumber plant that I had planted in the second box toward the front fence did so much better. the book helps you design your boxes depending on what you plan to grow. I learned you have to tweak things a little your own way as well. I discovered that I will never plant egg plant again. It grows fast and crowds other plants out. The marigolds worked awesome for bug control! I was also told that oregano and basil help with bugs and I had planted both so I not sure if the lack of bugs had something to do with it as well. I decided I will do a box next time specifically for herbs. I am going to do a deeper box for carrots. The carrots grew large in diameter but not in length. I trellised tomatoes and cucumbers for the first time and stopped measuring a tomato plant after it reached over eight feet tall! We had one tomato plant that we planted from seed and it produced the most fruit. The plant was LOADED with tomatoes!
I know this picture doesn't it do it justice. From our small square foot garden (we didn't even use all the square) I was able to harvest and bottle 27 quarts of salsa, 24 quarts of spaghetti sauce, 15 quarts of tomatoes, 27 pints of dill pickles, and 5 pints of jalapeno jelly. That's not counting all the fresh stuff we ate as well. I was amazed at the amount where we only used half of our garden space. I am really excited to expand and do more nest spring!

I tried bottling sweet corn for the first time and our family loves it! I love the fact that it is fresh from the garden and not full of all the additives and preservatives. My parents planted sweet corn and I was able to bottle 31 pints of sweet corn. I also tried bottling apple pie filling as well. I only did 6 quarts since our apple tree froze in early spring and only one limb produced apples. Hope next year is better! The kids love bottled fruit, especially peaches. I still had peaches and pears left over from last year so I bottled 24 quarts of peaches. It was so rewarding to see the shelves fill up!

A True Supporter!

Kourtney's teacher this year is running for a seat on the city council. She asked Mr. Scoubes if she could have a sign to put in the yard. She carried this sign home from school with a huge grin on her face! She even rounded up some help as she hammered it into the ground! We will have to wait and see what happens come November 3rd! Good Luck!