Backyard Updates

We just finished eating the last of our carrot "crop" this year in our garden. I am very pleased with how the carrots turned out. We are still harvesting jalepenos for our homemade salsa and bell peppers. Although, I am disappointed our bell peppers have mostly been dark purple, light green and dark green. I was not brave enough to try them...I was hoping for the sweeter variety - yellows, reds or oranges. I have also used a little of our green onions, but got uninspired to figure out how to use the rest of them. We also used thyme and rosemary for some yummy soups. And, our tomatoes just these past few weeks decided to arrive, but not sure they will actually ripen and turn red. I think my garden does not realize it is late October...
We added a sandbox to the bottom of the playscape. The kids favorite thing to do it in this fall has been to dig for hidden seashells and build ponds in the sand for plastic ducks. We finally opened a fire pit we received as a Christmas gift last year and set it up over the weekend. I think we were waiting to use it until we extended our backporch. But, just putting it out in the yard worked just fine...the grass was a little toasty underneath...but not too bad. We sat around it with my sister and brother-in-law and their kids who have just moved to Austin from Dallas and my mom and step-dad who were visiting. We roasted marshmellows and made Smores. It was a very fun, cozy and yummy time.

News!

We put this note in a little newborn diaper and sent them out by mail to our immediate family and some close friends who do not live nearby to announce the news. Now we wanted to share it with you too!

Minnesota

In August, we went on a family vacation to Minnesota. Part of Jeremy's family is from a small town up there - Vergas. There were lots of new things for the kids to experience on this trip - new cousins to meet, first time on an airplane for Caleb, first time the kids went fishing, first time on a canoe, first time for both on a 4-wheeler... Here are a few of our favorite pictures, but feel free to visit our Minnesota picture album over to the right. The vacation was wonderful! We had a very nice time with family. We stayed with cousins at their farm, no animals, but a barn, garden, cornfield, etc. Ella decided she wants to be a farm girl and pronounced as we drove away from Vergas to catch our plane, that "it had been the best vacation of her life!"...(in her short 3 1/2yr little life). Thanks to all the Franklins for a wonderful time!

Our House Is Really Clean

For the first time in over 5+ years, we can actually say that our house is clean... So sorry to all of you that have visited and did not realize this. But, we have had one of the worst vacuums for a while now that really just pretended to clean our carpet. I really did not like to think about everything sitting on the bottom of our carpet...but now it is gone! Today, we purchased a Dyson DC-17 bagless all-floors upright vacuum. We are now definite believers in the Dyson. We got a great deal at a tiny, little local warehouse here in Austin. We vacuumed our living room today to try it out and the picture below shows what we collected. Note-this is after I had already vacuumed with our old vacuum just a few days ago. If people dirt grosses you out...don't look. Jeremy even got inspired to clean after he saw what we collected in the living room. He just about vacuumed the rest of the house and literally picked up our old vacuum and threw it in the trash in the garage. We are very thankful. Thanks to the friends who helped us with our research!

Dates

Daddy and Ella went on a date and Jeremy and I went on a date recently.
One of the places Ella likes to go with daddy for a short outing is the golf course/club near our house. They go on a "water" date and sit outside on the patio overlooking the lake and drink a cup of water. Ella thinks it is a lot of fun. She specifically asked to dress-up special and to wear her flower dress with her hair fixed.On our date, Jeremy and I got to go see the broadway show "Wicked" when it came to Austin towards the end of August. We ate at Cafe Josie, a recommendation from friends, before the show and really liked it. It is American Tropic cuisine. The restaurant did not open until 6pm, so it was a unique experience waiting outside for it to open and then walking in with the first customers of the evening. Our food was presented so nicely, we took pictures.

I got Mesquite Grilled Jerk Chicken with mango salsa (above) and Jeremy got Salmon with Garlic Dill Butter. Both were very delicious!
Anyone else go on fun dates lately and what did you do?

Pre-school Happenings

Towards the end of the summer, I taught Ella's home co-op pre-school again. For those interested, here is a little of what we did that day.

We did a Beach and Ocean Theme...

We were going to start off by talking about Luke 5:1-7 about when Jesus told the disciples to cast their nets on the other side of the boat...but with preschoolers, plans don't always go as planned. Then we talked about and looked at pictures of different types of fish in the ocean. We sang "This is the way we go to the beach" and we acted out different things you do at the beach. We read "Sea, Sand and Me" and "Beach Day". Then we went "swimming" under the ocean to catch fish. The kids had to dive under a blue sheet and grab a fish and try to guess the name.For craft time, we made oceans in bottles and did sand art.For snack, I gave the kids pretzel sticks which they dipped in peanut butter and went "fishing" for goldfish. We also had apple crabs.For storytime, we listened to an audio tape and read the book "There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed a Shell", which is a takeoff of TWAOLWSA Fly. I happened to have an old lady puppet that swallows things that we received as a gift, so it worked well with this book. I just had to make pictures to go along with this story. Easy - I found them online.For center time, I used some things I found at Family Connections. I found some sea animal matching cards and magnet games there. We also did worksheets and they looked/dug for sea shells in a bucket of sand and had to sort them by shape.I taught just this past week again and used our BFIAR curriculum. I will post about that a little later.

Sake Tea Party

Jeremy brought PJs home for the kids from China, per Ella's request. We decided to have a sake tea party in them one morning even though the PJs were from China and the sake set was from Japan. It still worked! We drank lemonade.