the days of our lives

we are settling into a cozy, comfortable and rainy fall. snuggling under blankets and sipping hot tea. But its not all chillin out time and as usual life is full of activities.... here are a few pictures of things going down in the hood of late.

first and foremost is that we FINALLY finished painting the house...literally right before the november rains (praise jeebus for a beautiful october!). the house looks great, still a classic white farmhouse but now with a red door, porch, and trim. todd did most of it so i gotta give him props. we also had to get our chimney repaired.

the kids have been busy and enjoying their fall activities.

lucy is loving her ballet class. i mean pink tutus, dancing, twirling...its a 4 year old girls' dreamland.

riley took a martial arts class this fall, which he really enjoyed. admittedly, i was a little hesitant to sign him up because i have memories of my little brother ian coming home as a kid and trying to 'practice' on me (ian also used to jump off furniture in an attempt to fly after seeing superman or watching greatest american hero so his ability to separate reality from fiction was an ongoing issue.) ....love you bro!

anyway riley had a great time.....and not once did he try his moves out on his sister. he took the class with his buddy jack.

riley is also playing indoor soccer. he is on the same team as his good buddy jack and they are really starting to pass and play good ball. no pictures of this yet, but i'll post some if i get any.

both kids take a tumbling/gymnastics class on saturday morning which they look forward to all week. riley especially loves the climbing, and jumping, and swinging.

in farming news we got ourselves ten baby chicks. for about a month they lived in a box in our downstairs shower. then as they were getting too big (and too smelly) for indoor living todd fashioned a mini-coop within the big coop with a heat lamp. the separation is to keep the big birds from attacking these little guys before they are big enough to hold their own (since they have no mama hen to protect them).

so what else....oh we did have a little snow and todd took the kids up for a fun day of sledding last week. not enough on the hill for skiing yet but we are definately sending lots of good vibes to the snow gods!

and in the milestone category riley had his first sleep-over at his friend jacks' house last weekend. he had a great time. that left lucy home by herself that night with daddy and they had a special tea party/dinner...todd even put on his dress coat for the event (such a good daddy).

that's it.....happy fall!

trick or treat

we had a great halloween. we did our traditional trick or treating in downtown hood river.

just wanted to share a few quick shots.

lucy wanted to be a princess (as all nearly four year old girls want to be). she wore the dress her grandma judy made her for christmas last year. she had a crown on at one point but changed her mind in favor of a pink bow and pigtails for her hair.

riley wasn't sure what to call himself, he just wanted to be scary. so we found this mask at the thrift store which he loved!

todd even busted out a costume this year. damn sexy.

the boys having their annual last ice cream cone of the year (halloween is our local ice cream shop's last day of business for the year and they give away ice cream until it's gone...pretty cool tradition)

our pumpkins all lined up on the porch.

hope your all hallows eve was full of tricks and treats!

pumpkins and apples

what a fantastic weekend we just had!!! it was a fun fall celebration all around. good friends from portland and my cousin jim and his family made it up for the festivities.

first we went up to rasmussen farms pumpkin patch (sadly this may be the last year for the farm as the owners are retiring). the kids had a great time picking out their pumpkins, running through the corn maze and playing on the tractor.






then back home we borrowed a cider press and pressed some apples! it was so. much. fun!!! a few warm cider barn burners to drink and everyone was having a great time.

....my friend camille cranking the press

....the kids checking out the yummy juice coming out

....my turn with camille's husband reuben working the crank

....my cousin jim and his wife megan (who by the way has two little kids, is 7mo pregnant with #3 and is still working the cider press... she rocks!)


so some of that cider made it's way into buckets to be fermented into hard cider (under the direction of my wine making friends camille and reuben) .....we are looking forward to a little something to warm our evenings this winter.


....and then to finish off an already fabulous weekend we also made our traditional halloween monster cookies!! yum!

seriously good times!!!!

canning madness

we are in the midst of a full force canning madness right now!! we had a very cool summer (and thus not a great harvest). typically most of our canning would be done by now usually by the end of aug or early sept. we did an mid-summer jam can (blueberry, raspberry, strawberry jams) in july and not much since (though i have been freezing any vegetables we harvested in the meantime so it wasn't a complete loss).

now with the frost looming we had to throw in the towel and finally pull what tomatoes we had and put up what we could. todd's mom judy came out to visit last weekend and got caught up in processing tomatoes for sauce (bless her heart she just dove right in coring and chopping). even with our paltry harvest we managed to put up some salsa, pizza sauce and plain old canned tomatoes.

we also canned a fair bit more green than red this year. in addition to canning the typical dilly beans (just delicious in a good bloody mary), we also for the first time put up some pickled green tomatoes and some green tomato chutney this year (we had to do something with all those green tomatoes!!!). and last but not least some salsa verde with the tomatillo harvest and the chiles.

now this time of year we normally are canning our pears (which is why with the summer harvest and the fall harvest all going into cans in the last couple of week i can truly call it a canning madness).... we canned two batches of pear butter, plain old pears in simple syrup, and for the grownups some pears in brandy....yummm!

thankfully i think we are near the end of our canning craze....maybe with all our 'extra' time we can actually finish painting our house...and the garlic needs to get in the ground...and... and.. and...needless to say life continues to be busy on our homestead in the hood.

ten

today we celebrate our tenth anniversary. wow. time does certainly fly!

here's a little peek back to that beautiful day up on mt. hood ten years ago.....

how lucky am i to be married to this man...and have this life of fun and spirit and love.....plenty to celebrate that is for sure.

the first ten years have been a blast....and i am happily looking forward to the next ten!

happy anniversary to us!

malibu wedding

so this post is about a week late but we traveled down to los angeles last weekend for my college roommate lisa's wedding. we left the kids with my dad and again has some great adult time (i told todd that i've seen him more in the past 6 weeks than i've seen him in the past 5 yrs). anyway we had a great great time. many of my college girlfriends came which made it a little reunion and all the more fun.

lisa looked amazing, brian (the groom) dashing, the setting was beautiful and the wedding was fabulous! (not that i had any doubts that lisa could throw a pretty kickin party...she even had it catered by a food truck...kogi korean bbq...yummmm!)

here are a few shots from the wedding......

.......the ceremony

my college girlfriends (me, lisa, hava, renee)......

so wonderful to see good friends!....

.....the newlyweds (they have that just got married glow)

.... hava and her husband adam clearly having a good time

......cutting the cake

.....another happy couple

....ahhhhhhh

.....lisa and i discovered blue raspberry blow pops in college and you know its a good party when the blow pops come out (god bless her for having them at the bar!)

.....the college roommates (19yrs after we first showed up at the dorm room freshman year)

such a fun wedding......great great weekend.

back to school

well we have officially started school. each kid got to choose what they wanted for breakfast on the morning of the first day of school. riley wanted scrambled eggs, grits and bacon. lucy wanted chocolate chip pancakes. luckily they started on different days or we would have been cooking all morning!! i don't know what their food choices say about them but both started their respective school days with full happy bellies.

riley started on tuesday. a big first grader. he just exudes confidence this year as opposed to the nervous anticipation of last year.

lucy started on wednesday. she is all casual ease and smiles.

and so school starts again....hope your back-to-school days were happy too!