Our God is an Awesome God

How about this for a beautiful vista? That's a front moving through the neighborhood.

Don't Try this at Home

Today was a beautiful Saturday, without any other commitments. So we worked hard all day on all those fall projects that we haven't gotten to. One is a long overdue cleaning of our vinyl siding... we tried power washing last year, but it didn't work. Seems like the best approach is just plain old-fashioned elbow grease, so Dan tackled the job with vigor. The problem is reaching up that high! So he got creative. We didn't get a picture of him hanging out the windows right above him, through which he cleaned above and beside and below the windows about 18 inches each directions. YIKES. Hopefully the next post will not be a picture of Elizabeth imitating him, since she is a climber... need to get a picture of her up a tree, though usually I'm trying to get her down, not looking for a camera!

Food

Two adjustments in the area of food for the Hall this year:

#1 We went back to making popcorn the "old-fashioned" way, in a pot on the stove. It isn't all that much work, is cheaper, and we've found it tastes a lot better. We've even figured out how to make it like kettle corn -- basically just sprinkle with salt AND sugar.

#2 "Bread eggs" have been part of my family forever -- I think my dad learned to make them from his mom. I've heard other people call them "egg-in-a hole" and "one-eyed Egyptians" , but they are all basically the same yummy breakfast treat. This year, though, I was amazed when my friend Jan, who was living with us while looking for a rental house, asked me for a biscuit cutter. She used it to cut a nice round hole in the bread. I've always torn a piece out of the middle, leaving a very ragged, random "hole" in the middle. I loved the nice round hole, but I didn't like it so big, so we experimented until we found the perfect tool -- the lid to my half & half bottle. It makes just the right sized hole for the egg, so now I can make beautiful bread eggs (that taste just as good!)

Garden Harvest

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We enjoyed some items from our garden -- here you see Zeke eating one of the 5 or 6 ears of corn we grew!'

I got quite a few tomatoes from just 2 plants, and loads of green tomatoes that I need to figure out what to do with. Next year, the tomatoes will go in a place with more sun!

We also harvested sweet potatoes from 4 plants given to us by our friends the Cooks.

Cardinal vs. Dodgers

The Dodgers played the Cardinals in the first postseason series. Most of us, having lived almost 20 years in LA, couldn't help but root for the Dodgers. But Isaac, who has little memory of California, was a bit more conflicted. The Dodgers won, but went on to lose to the Phillies without much of a fight in the National League championship.

Rain, rain, go away -- we have a fence to build!

I don't know what the official statistics say, but it seems like it has rained most of October. I'm pretty sure that it has rained EVERY Thursday, at least, since both Isaac and Zeke had soccer practices scheduled on Thursdays, and had all their practices rained out :) Soccer is over, but it is Thursday again, so it is raining....and the picture above shows you how saturated the ground is -- we don't actually have a creek running through our property!

This has made a long-overdue project very difficult to complete -- putting up some fencing so that we can finally get horses. When we moved in 2004, getting horses was one of the first requests from our kids. We told them we'd start thinking about it in 2006 -- well, here it is, almost 2010, and all we've done is think, until now. Somehow, Dan and Abby found a way to dig 3 holes and sink some fence posts (actually, the rain may have helped some there!), some of it while rain was coming down. All that is left to do now is to string the barbed wire and hang a fence....hopefully before too long I'll be able to post a picture of a horse on our land!

Too busy!

Okay, I officially declare that I am just too busy to have a blog. Nevertheless, it is the easiest way I have of letting people into our lives, so I will continue, nevertheless. So it is time for a series of posts.....