School Pictures

Almost it is the weekend already.  Truthfully I am ready for a day of rest.  It has been a busy but good week.  The children and I have been learning wonderful things.  And the weather has been great.  Just last night we went out for a nice walk right around sundown.  It was good to see the farmers out harvesting their soybeans.


One of my goals this week was to get school pictures taken. When we had the old Walmart I would have them taken annually at their portrait studio. The new Walmart doesn't have one so I just do it myself. It is more costly to print them but I like my pictures better.




This morning we had to be up to town early.  Ellyana had an appointment to get spayed.  We will go pick her up later this afternoon.  Poor thing.  It might be nice for us to have a calmer dog for a few days.


While we were in town we ate breakfast at McDonald's.  The children missed this as we used to do it on our weekly morning trips to Fargo for Daniel's vision therapy appointment.  Since school started we go to Fargo in the afternoon.  They love the hotcakes there.


After we ate I went to Walmart and printed out the pictures I chose from those I took.  I had some wallets made of this pose of Leah.  It was too sunny but I liked her expression.

This is the pose of Daniel that we chose for an 8X10 and some wallets.  We took it down by the old crab apple tree.

It was hard to get a good one of Leah this year.  Earlier it was too sunny and windy.  Here the mosquitoes were biting her and her hair was messed.  But I had it made into an 8X10 and wallets anyway. 

The coloring on this picture is off because of the green slide, I think.  But I adjusted it before I printed out the wallets.

When we got home we did Daniel's vision therapy for the day.  Then I got my ripe tomatoes washed, cut up, and put through my juicer for sauce.  It will take several hours to cook down.  The children and I finished our lunch.  Thankfully it is a light day for school today.  But I must get them in from "recess" so we can finish before I have to pick Elly up from the vet's.

More tomatoes!

This Sunday I had the most tomatoes to process at one time. I had about 18 gallons to put through the juicer. This is what my counter looked like by the time I was finished juicing.



While I am still juicing I start cooking it down to sauce. I had my two big kettles going all morning and finished around 3:00. I got 6 kettles full of juice.

The juice that didn't originally fit into the two kettles I poured into this huge kettle which has the capacity of 4 kettles full of the other size. I don't use this for cooking much as it has such a thin bottom and would scorch easily.

I processed jars in my canner 3 times, not full each time. I usually get 4-5 quarts from 2 kettles full of sauce that I cooked down. I had one jar break the second canner full. That makes such a mess! I ended up with 14 quarts of sauce by the end of the day.

Brandon was home for the weekend and left for Fargo around 4:00. I think it has been harder for me yesterday and today than it was last week probably because he left from home. Last week I left from his place. He was a good help to Tim on Sunday. They took the wood stove chimney down from the roof and cleaned it well. Then they had to lower the wood stove and take the inside stack off and clean it outside. It definitely is a two man job.

Today we are back to school. The next two weeks in geography we are studying about Mexico. The children got their (fake) passports today and we left on an airplane for Mexico. We hit a little turbulence on the way and they really enjoyed that. When we got there I put a Mexican flag sticker on the first page in their passports and we read a couple books about Mexico. It was a good day. Tomorrow we will attempt to make a pinata.

Leah did her ABC puzzle almost by herself. She is great about knowing the names and sounds of the capital letters and writing them. The lower case letters are a little more difficult for her but she did well. Of course Daniel used it as a road for his Lego truck.



Here the children are drawing a desert picture in their nature notebooks. Both drew some great cacti.

For music we are using Wee Sing Around The World. Both children and I are enjoying it more than the patriotic songs we learned last year. While the former were important to learn these are just more fun.

I've got some fry sausage and bow tie noodles cooking. I had better feed my hungry crew.

What a week!

Hasn't it been a great week? I have loved the warm temps and sunshine! Of course I don't have to work outside in it and purposely stay inside when it is the hottest outside...but I think the weather has been wonderful. Last week when we were in town and had gone to the beach to wade in the water I had thought to myself, "If it is warm next week I will take the kids up here swimming!" So that is what I did. There were enough nice days to choose from as each seemed as nice as the one before it.

First I had planned to go on Tuesday but that didn't work out. Then I thought that Wednesday would be better. We could go to the beach and stay to watch Dustin's softball game. Since Wednesday is closer to the end of the week I could do my weekly shopping then and not have to go on Thursday. It has worked out rather well.

We left home as soon as we finished school for the day. I planned to get lunch from a fast food place so we didn't even eat first. The children had a snack around 11:00 so they were content to wait. We first stopped at the library so I could drop off my books and pick up a few new ones. Then we went through Hardee's drive through. I was surprised to find my nephew, Kyle was the one who took my order and met me at the window! We visited a little until he had to go take another order.

By the time we got to the beach it was only 2:00. So we enjoyed almost three hours there. I had said I hoped we would have the beach to ourselves. Daniel thought it would be nice if there were other kids there so he could play with them. I agreed. There were only a few adults sunning themselves when we arrived. All left shortly after we came. I guess I got my wish.

Leah is enjoying her burger. She always orders a burger with just catsup and doesn't care for fries.

Daniel is testing the water. It was a bit chilly but he did eventually swim. Leah just played on the edge.

Notice how Daniel puts his hands on his hips. He reminds me so much of Dustin when he does that. Recently I realized that I do the same thing. That mannerism must have passed down from me.

We enjoyed our time there. A mother with four children came later so that was nice for Daniel and Leah. I didn't go into the water other than to cool my feet a bit. But I liked sitting looking at the scenery and reading my book.

We were able to get our shopping done at Walmart and the dollar store before Dustin's game at 6:30. We had read a story about a little girl who pretends she is "Ladybug Girl" and wears a red outfit with a red tutu and red wings with black dots on them. Of course Leah wanted to "be her." I remembered seeing wings at the dollar store. They had a red pair and a little red tutu. She is enjoying them.

While we were in Walmart Brandon called me. He was wondering where I was as he wanted to use my van. Since he got Thursday off from work he thought he could move some of his things to his apartment in Fargo. He drove up to town and got the van and left me his car while we were at Dustin's game. It was fun driving his car as it is very responsive! The only thing was, I couldn't remember how to turn the subs off. You should have seen the looks from people! Here was this older lady driving this sports car down the street with loud base playing to the christian radio station! Daniel loved it. We laughed almost the whole time. We ended up turning the stereo off on the way home.

It was fun watching Dustin play. Leah has made a little friend of the daughter of one of Dustin's teammates. Since they have a little playground at the complex the children like to go to the games now. We just stayed for one game so we could stop and get our groceries and get home before it was too late.

The week hasn't been all fun and games though. It seems like there has been a good portion of work mixed in there. Here is a picture of my bread rising in my french loaf pans. I got these pans at the Kitchen Shop in West Acres. They were spendy but make such nice french bread. You aren't supposed to wash or oil them. A few years after I got them the bread started sticking to the pans. It was very frustrating. After some trial and error I found I could roll my loaves in a little flour before I put them in the pans. I haven't had a problem since then.

Daniel and I got a start on making our tomato sauce. I have two of these nice stainless steel kettles with the thick bottoms. The sauce never burns onto the bottom and I can leave them cooking without stirring very often. It takes about an hour to cook down to tomato sauce. Here it still has about another half an hour to go.

It worked out well for me to have my town day on Wednesday instead of Thursday. Thursday afternoon I got a start on my house cleaning. Then I didn't have so much to do today. I think I will try to do that most weeks.

Daniel and Tim went fishing again. It is becomming a Friday afternoon tradition. I'm glad that they can get out together as soon the weather will be cold. Leah is still taking her nap. And I best go and get the rest of my work done. Looking forward to Sabbath!!!