Happy Halloween!

Halloween is such an odd holiday. I love the basis for the holiday. All hallows' eve. If only we still dressed like zombies and witches...I feel my zest for the holiday wanes with the happy costumes. We are totally guilty of it at our house. Katie's costumes, especially, are always happy and cute. Last year she was a witch, though a candy corn witch. She was cute. Her dress was a candy corn with an orange bottom, yellow middle and white top. We decorated her black spiky hat with orange, yellow, and white pom poms. This year, Katie wanted to dress in the fifties era, so we made her a poodle skirt. She looked soooo cute. I wanted to bloody her up a bit, but knew that would not go over with her!

Robby dressed like a soccer player one day and a rap artist one day. Tonight to the youth group party he went with the soccer player. No bloody make up for him, either! They both got great treats. My favorite thing about the holiday now is seeing what interesting candy they get.

This year they got nuts and granola bars from people. Given the choice of an orange or a Hersey's, Katie picked the chocolate, but her friend picked the orange! Nice choice, Lexie. No gummy eye-balls this year, but they got a strange lizard in formaldehyde candy. Some people bag their candies in cute little grab bags with bows. Others give out full size candy bars...shocking. At a friend's house, the girls got the entire bowl since there were only three trick or treaters before them!

In a few years, I want to stay home and answer the door to ooh and ahh over all the costumes. In the mean time, I love planning the kids' costumes, even if they aren't scary.

Growing up with Vegetables

I can never predict what my kids will like. This fall, they are eating acorn squash like crazy. Maybe my memory is failing, but it seems that last year they picked at it. Tonight I baked it with brown sugar, butter, cinnamon, and some lemon juice. Yum. They both ate 5 large squares of the squash. Robby liked it so much, he reheated his so that he could finish it.

I'm glad I've introduced them to squash - fresh squash. Mom used to buy frozen squash for us. I never liked it. It was always whipped up and sugary, but there was something about it that I didn't like. I look back on that and wonder if it was because it lacked freshness. I haven't made frozen squash at home. We grow it or buy it fresh.

Hopefully my kids will always appreciate vegetables. I hope that because they have tried many different vegetables in their childhood, they will eat vegetables as adults.

I can wait to find out.

Fall Also Means Pumpkin Carving!

I remember when Robby was around 18 months old and Halloween came around. Arnie and I took him to the pumpkin patch on a muddy Saturday, picked up a couple of nice pumpkins. Arnie tends to pick the creatively shaped or colored ones and I pick the perfectly round, bright orange ones. We lugged the pumpkins inside, cut them open, handed Robby a spoon and showed him how to scoop out pumpkin innards. I'm not sure why the knowledge I already had of my son did not transfer to pumpkin carving immediately, but pretty soon I was laughing as my toddler sat with a very sour look on his face, fingers stiff and spread wide, dripping with stringy gooey pumpkin.

This was my kid who did not like to get his hands dirty outside. He would play in the sand box until he toppled over and put his hand into the sand. Then he would be upset. He would help me dig around in the garden until the dirt stuck on his pants. He would play with play dough until it got so soft that it started to stick to his fingers. Silly boy. Didn't like to get mucky.

So, for a few years, Arnie and I would scoop his pumpkins for him. He liked to draw the face and liked to hold the little saw with us. He loved the way the pumpkin faces looked with candle light flickering behind them. Katie, of course, is so opposite. We have great pictures of little Katie with her head inside pumpkins, checking to make sure she got all the stringy stuff out. She would pull the guts out of the pumpkin and then play with it until her shirt and pants were covered in slime. Many Halloween pumpkin carvings ended with Katie being stripped and put in a bath tub.

But just look at them now! I'm not sure how someone ever came up with the idea of carving pumpkins, but it was definitely someone who believed that playing with food was a good thing! These kids are creative and interested in the traditions of holidays. What more could I ask? Robby went for the drill this year. His pumpkin is the polka dotted one. Katie created a fun face from lots of shapes. I used cookie cutters to make ghost and pumpkin faces. Robby is okay with getting his hands dirty now. Katie kept her mess to the newspapers under the pumpkin. We all ended our carving session with cool pumpkins.

Fall Means Salmon Running the Rivers

Saturday Arnie caught this five pound salmon in the Chehalis. This is me honing my skills at cleaning a fish. I'm getting pretty good at it. Look at those clean cuts! I don't usually give directions in my blog, but I thought I'd walk you through cleaning a fish. You start at the anus with a very sharp knife. With the blade at an angle toward the outside of the fish, make a straight cup up toward the head, right between the two pelvic and pectoral fins. If you keep the knife from cutting into the fish too far, the innards are less shredded and easier to pull out.

Once the cut is made, you should be able to open the fish wide. I usually dig out the spinal cord and cut the intestine/bladder cord that is connected to the anus. Then, I begin scraping the innards into the trash. Easier than I expected it to be. After dozens of fish, I'm quite adept at it.

We wrapped it in parchment and foil to refrigerate overnight since dinner was ready. Tonight I barbecued that beautiful fish stuffed with salsa. The skin slipped right off as I removed it from the foil I set on the grill. So moist and flaky. I served it up with garden beans - probably our last harvest of beans for 2010. We also served baked potatoes which is a Lewis family favorite. The potatoes were from the store - from Washington, at least. The kids love salmon. No ketchup needed anymore! Tonight Katie was laughing about how much ketchup we used to use. Now we don't even know if there is any in the refrigerator! How times change.

Overwhelmed by Fall Events

What do people who have house cleaners do with their time? I imagine that they must sit and admire their belongings. Perhaps they go to movies or restaurants. Maybe they have friends over spontaneously. The fall is always the time when I feel like I can't keep up. The moment I walk in the door to the moment my head hits the pillow, I am trying to keep a clean household. I know, you can hear the violins, can't you?

The reason the fall is so difficult for our family is because we have something to go to every week night and at least one, but sometimes two weekend days. The kids and I leave the house around 7 am during the week. From 5:45 am to 7 am, I get myself ready for the day and do at least one household chore. I empty the dishwasher or fold a load of clothes or start a load of clothes. Once a week I make a crock pot dinner in the morning, too. Every once in a while we come home between school and our next event, in which case we have dinner at home - something quick and processed likely. I might get another chore done - garbage out, for example - and then we are off again. Most nights, though, we stay in town because there is not enough time to come all the way home between events. By the time we get home for good any weekday night, it is around 7:45 pm. We concentrate on getting homework done, preparing bags and sporting gear for the next day, and then bedtime for Robby and Katie. Whew!

Once the kids are in bed, I clean the living room and kitchen. If I still have energy, I might work on the laundry. Usually I don't have the energy. The kids do help when we get home early enough. They each have small chores that really take my load off. We are a family of tap water, so one of the kids washes our water bottles, dries them out, and refills them for the next day. The other kid rings out swimsuits from swim team and cleans out the cat box. Chores that I don't have to do. Love it.

Arnie, bless his heart. He pretty much comes home and collapses each night. On the weekend he runs around cleaning up the yard and garage. Sometimes he makes a meal for us, both during the week if he has the energy and on the weekends.

I wonder if this is the best lifestyle to model for the kids. We are so beat for several months of the fall...I know they feel it, too. Parenting is weird that way. I'm not sure we will know the effects of this until the kids are grown up. Scary.

Beautiful Sauce

I spent a few hours making a few more jars of sauce. Just for the satisfaction of putting up my garden. The sauce is really a beautiful color. Even though the tomatoes were bruised up on the outside form the cold weather, they were still lovely on the inside. Isn't that what counts? Inner beauty. Regardless of the weather, I was determined to get something out of that garden. Tonight I have some beans to freeze.

After laboring over that sauce today, I couldn't bear to open one of my jars for spaghetti. In total silliness, I opened store bought sauce, browned up some hamburger, onion, garlic, and poured that processed sauce all over it. As I gaze lovingly at my home-canned tomato sauce, I wonder if I will ever be able to open it. Maybe if next season is better, I will be able to let go of this season's sauce...

The Garden's Last Legs

Well, I hung in there. Letting the garden stay put, drooping, browning, looking lethargic, was difficult for me. When the garden looks vibrant and healthy is the crowning glory. Now is not its crowning glory. However, it produces. I harvested and froze small bags of beans and carrots. Today I made two jars of tomato sauce and hope to make more next weekend. Yikes! Freezing and canning the garden in October! What a crazy season this has been! At least my weekends have allowed me to keep working the garden.

As the school year takes off, so does our time. I am back to planning lessons and correcting student work. Robby and Katie are swimming, playing soccer, playing volleyball, and tumbling every night of the week which of course means that I am driving, sitting, or working out myself if we are at the YMCA. Not such a bad schedule since I can get work done or do something great for myself when they are at practice. Such a bad schedule for my publishing efforts, though. Perhaps it is time for a technology update...something to look into.