Fall Walk

October came and we just had to get out of the house. Fall is so windy that it is hard. So I made it into a hunt to get the girls excited. Patrick even came along, though he was over the walking part a lot sooner than the girls. The objective was to find lots of different leaves, so I told the girls they could only get two of the same kind of leaves. Yes, I knew that wasn't realistic, but they at least tried to limit how many leaves they put into the bag. When we got home, we each got to pick our five favorite leaves, glue them to pretty paper, and display on the fridge. Rachael kept trying to sneak extra leaves on. Anna just liked the biggest leaves in the pile. I think we all were satisfied.

My Little Princesses

Rachael and Anna both wanted to be princesses for Halloween.  Luckily we had a dress that would fit Rachael with a little hemming. Anna's dress, on the other hand, began as a great idea and then turned into an up-to-the-last-minute sew-a-thon. I never pick something simple for these schemes of mine. I just wanted to make her a dress that was like her: light, breezy, and fun. That translated into chiffon as the material of choice. See all those rounded edges on her petals? Yeah. I'm sure there was an easier way, but it was me with the spray starch and my rolled hem foot for quite a few hours. The actual construction of the dress wasn't bad, until I decided it needed more petals than I had planned. I know. I'm crazy. I finished an hour before our ward trunk-or-treat, which, to be fair, was about three days before Halloween day.

Rachael got to wear her costume to school. We spent lots of time getting her "Elsa" hairdo just right. Then I made a mistake. I suggested makeup since it was a special day. I gave her a little blush, eye shadow, and lipstick. Oh my. She turned 16 in about two minutes. What did I do? Where did my little girl go? She is so beautiful. I can't stand it.

Anna's favorite part about her dress was the twirliness. I love that bit too.

Carving it Up

We ended up with exactly four carving pumpkins from our garden. The girls drew the faces that they wanted on paper and I reproduced them on the pumpkins so we could carve them. Rachael complained about how icky the guts were, but she still played with them once we got her to sort out the seeds. Anna's pumpkin was a pretty jolly one, but Rachael's took a darker tone with scars and tears. Somehow they both wanted boogers to come out the noses, but I refused to draw them. They were so proud of them when we were finished. Anna was hurt when we blew out the candles inside for the night. 

Harvest

 In October we harvested our garden of unripe cantaloupe and green tomatoes. I tried one of the cantaloupe; it tasted like cucumber. Blech. Not sure what went on there. Neither of our pepper plants survived. Out pumpkins came toward the middle of the month.

Patrick used the red tomatoes to make a sweet salsa (we didn't have any hot peppers on hand). We were able to ripen some of the tomatoes in the garage. We also chopped up a couple quarts of the green ones. We experimented with green tomato bread and cake recipes. Both turned out extremely moist and reminiscent of zucchini bread due to the spices used. I froze several bags of chopped green tomatoes to use later as well.

Later we got a bushel and a half of apples from Patrick's parents. I made applesauce, frozen apple crisps, and apple butter. Mmm. Apple butter is like fall in a jar. It is rather anticlimactic to have a slow cooker full of apples turn out only 2.5 pints of brown goodness.

Preschool

In September Anna started preschool in a group with a few other children from our ward. I got to teach for the first month and we learned All About Me. I only took pictures of two of our activities. I think the kids liked making the first letters of their names using their bodies the best out of everything we did.