Playing and Picking

How well do you remember your playing days? I remember feeling too old to play but still wanting to. I was embarrassed that I was still playing and didn't want anyone to know. This is a picture of my bike. It was more than a bike to me. Usually it was a horse. I used to have a basket on the front of it that my pet chihuahua, Bimbo, would love to ride in. Awww...good memories. After he put some different wheels from an old bike on it Daniel has been enjoying riding my old bike around.

Since all the animals are gone the children have been enjoying playing in the pasture. There are all sorts of things to imagine and a whole big area to do it in. Here they are going off to play something in the "woods." Notice faithful Sunny there to protect them. She takes her job very seriously.

Leah said she was a bird.

I had gone down to the tree to pick some crab apples.

Here was Daniel's contribution. They were a little out of his reach so I helped pull some branches down. It didn't take us long to fill the bucket as the tree is loaded.

We have another tree in the pasture that has delicious little apples on it. Usually we didn't get very many of them as the horses would eat them. I picked a few and will continue to do so as we eat them. I might even send some along with Whitney for Misty.

There is a recipe in our local church cookbook for chokecherry syrup. A few years ago I used it and liked it so well I thought I would try it to see if it would work for making crab apple syrup. I didn't realize that crab apples have pectin in them. It made good jelly without having to add any pectin. So now I use that recipe to make my crab apple jelly. Doesn't it look pretty?

It's been a busy week. We are having Daniel's 8th birthday party tomorrow after church. I let the children choose what they want for their meal (within reason, of course.) Daniel chose chicken lasagna. Yesterday morning I cooked the chicken and made the sauce. After I went to town and brought home the lasagna noodles I assembled it in pans. Today I picked the corn and husked it. I have the green beans ready to cook. And I have a nice vegetable salad marinating in oil and vinegar. Between yesterday and today I have the house cleaned. I even have the table set. It won't be hard at all to cook the meal as it is all ready to either go into the oven, on the stove, or on the table.

One day last week I spent some time looking online for cake ideas. I found some really neat ones that I thought I could manage. One was a campfire cake that I really wanted to make. You use pretzels and gumdrops to make a fire in the center of the cake. There were trees made out of cornflakes, marshmallows, and green dye. The people were in graham cracker sleeping bags. So cute. But Daniel didn't really think so.

Then there was a lego cake. It was a 9x13 sheet cake covered in blue frosting with cupcakes also frosted blue as the raised bumps. It looked just like a lego piece and would be simple to make. Daniel sort of liked that one.

Then I found the race track cake. I think he liked it because of the cars on top. It, too, was easy to make and it even looks like an 8 for his age.

That's all I have to say for now. I'm looking forward to my Sabbath rest!