Spooky Halloween Pics

I'm behind, as usual, on posting. I've been pre-occupied recently with school, and Tom's business. Finally I have all the books for the business organized and entered into an accounting software program...that took me a very long time because I had been putting it off. I've also worked on the website. I had some pictures on there before that were way too big, so I was able to re-size them, add a few more pages, and a few more pictures. It still needs a lot of work, but I think it's getting better.

The beautiful Fall Colors around here have already begun to disappear...but thankfully we've been enjoying some unseasonably HOT weather recently...in the 70's!

For Kyle's Birthday he wanted to dress up in a Halloween costume that my brother Ken used to wear...although I think this was actually a combination of two different costumes. Kyle LOVED it.

We went to a local horse ranch because they were having some Halloween festivities. I thought for sure a lot of kids would be in Halloween costumes, but Kyle was the only one! Reeve chose not to dress up. Kyle said he loved scaring everyone, and it was a great intro into announcing that today was his 6th Birthday.

There was a very cool hay maze there. Kyle scared a lot of folks in there. It was kind of dark, and I did get lost several times!

We took a horse drawn wagon ride to a pumpkin patch. The driver got a kick out of Kyle and let him drive the horses, Lady on the left and Ruby on the right. He said Kyle did a really good job...despite his scary outfit and super-long black finger nails.

There were a lot of good sized pumpkins there, and the kids got a kick out of walking through the pumpkin patch to pick them out...man they were heavy!

After the pumpkin patch we took a walk to the corn maze...oooo...spooky!

Reeve was not impressed with the corn maze...I must admit the hay maze was better.

The last thing we did was suppossed to be a "pony" ride. Well they gave Reeve and Kyle safety helmets and then handed me the reigns to a HORSE.
They said I could walk them around for as long as I liked...sounds like a pretty good deal...right? Well this horse immediately sensed I knew NOTHING about horses and proceeded to shove me around to where he wanted to go which was an ATV with a cart on back full of hay and a cat!

I complained to the nice horse people that the horse wasn't listening to me and didn't want to walk, but wanted to eat. One guy yells to another guy, "Hey Earl can you teach this lady how to handly a horse!" Then Earl shouts back to me, "Yeah, Lady you just yank him to where you want to go." Ugh! Kyle graciously got off to let Reeve have a turn...I tried to yank the horse I really did, but to tell you the truth I was afraid of him too! He was strong and I think he enjoyed head-butting me out of the way. Thankfully Reeve agreed to end my torture, and we went home.

A couple of days later we carved our pumpkins. This year we printed pumpkin designs, taped them to the pumpkins, used a little sharp nail to make the outline on the pumpkin, and then carved on the dotted lines. It was fairly simple and I thought they turned out really well. The kids each carved their own pumpkin all on their own.

Kyle chose a scary Pirate.

Reeve chose a hooting Owl.

And I chose a wicked witch.

Election in the Town of Fountain

I worked at our Township polling place yesterday, and I had a lot of fun. Prior to yesterday we had 337 registered voters for our Township. Yesterday we registered 38 new voters... a mixture of young first time voters, voters who hadn't voted in a very long time, and new residents. Of the 375 registered voters 286 came out to vote (8 via absentee ballot) yesterday...that's a staggering 76.27% voter turn-out!

We have one machine for voting or you can use a paper ballot. 112 folks used the machine and 52 voted for McCain, 53 voted for Obama, and 7 voted for a 3rd party candidate. 174 folks voted the paper method and 77 voted for Obama, 94 voted for McCain, 1 person did not vote for President, and 2 voted for a 3rd party candidate.
We had one person who tried to vote twice...it took us about 10minutes to try to solve that mystery. We tally the number of voters and at the end of the night that tally has to match the number of votes...pretty straightforward.

Well we tallied 286 voters, but had 287 votes. After counting and re-counting, our Cheif Election Inspector thought to check the paper ballots for the poll workers initials. We have to have 2 poll workers initial each ballot. In the past poll workers had pre-initialed the ballots, but thankfully there is a law now that states they have to initial the ballots in front of the voter. Sure enough we found one ballot that had no signatures! That person voted only for Obama, and we threw that vote out...naughty sneaky person can't fool us :-).

So McCain won in our Township 146 votes to Obama's 130 votes.

Tallying up the vote was extremely interesting to me and my fellow poll workers (4 of us worked last night). There were 3 Candidates running for Congress, Ron Kind (D), Paul Stark (R), and Richard Barrett (Libertarian). Around 10 folks that voted for John McCain also voted for the Democrat Ron Kind. Ron Kind won in our Township, but unfortunately I do not remember by how much. We also had a Democrat, Tom Crofton and a Republican, Ed Brooks, running for State Assembly. It was fairly evenly split among those 10 McCain/Kind voters who either voted for Crofton or Brooks.
We saw a lot of new faces coming out to vote, and a few characters.

The two "extreme" voters were both voters we registered yesterday. One man had on a T-shirt that read "I like this bush...not this Bush" The pic under "I like this bush," was of a woman's "ahem" area, and under "not this Bush" was the President. Can you say uncomfortable? The man kept pointing his shirt out to us and saying "I betcha can't guess whom I'm voting for." A fellow poll worker told the man "we really don't want to know."

The other extreme was a young boy who just turned 18 last month. It was a hot day here yesterday (74F) and he was wearing a cut-off shirt. He had a huge tatoo of a 6" rifle on his right shoulder that said "Country Folk Know How to Survive." There was a large concern in our Township that an Obama Presidency would create stricter gun control.

Anywho...it was a smooth night for tallying the vote. I thought for sure we'd be there until past 11pm, but we were all done and out the door by 10:30pm...just in time for me to get in the car and listen to John McCain's concession speech.
When I came home Reeve and Kyle were in bed, but both awake, and anxious to know who had won. I told them McCain won in our Township, but it sounds like Obama won the Electoral College vote. They stayed awake talking for a bit, but went to sleep soundly.

Clay Class #3

This is a pic of the piggy bank that Reeve made in his first clay class.


The third clay class was called "face pots" and Reeve is working on a tea set.


Kyle is doing his own thing and making a Dr. Seuss-like city.


This is a pic of the fish cup Reeve made and the "robber" cup Kyle made...not a very good pic of Kyle's cup. I asked him, "Why a robber?" and he said he wanted to paint a really cool mask on him.

Soccer, Clay Class, & the Electoral Map

Kyle's team usually plays 4 on 4 in soccer. Sometimes he doesn't get to play the whole game. Kyle and Hailey are 2 of the best players on his team. I thought it was really cute when they both had to wait on the sidelines.

Kyle was shy at first...she's a pretty aggressive girl.

They're not even interested in the game. I asked Kyle later what they were talking about and he said birthdays and the weather.

The Pump House Museum in La Crosse every year offers a variety of art classes for home schooled children. I couldn't pass signing them up for the clay classes. They go every Thursday in October and on the last Thursday they get to paint and fire all of their work. They've had two classes now and they love it.

The second class was making clay tiles. We've been reading a lot about dinosaur fossils lately, so Kyle chose to make some fossils on his tile. Reeve made a fish, Kyle made a flower, and they both made one with Christmas trees.

The display in the museum right now is filled with differently decorated herons. The kid's favorite was the "Heron Potter" heron.

Like the rest of the country Reeve and Kyle are very interested in the election. They watched both the DNC and the RNC and decided without a doubt that they want Barak Obama to win the election...too bad they can't vote. They have their own reasons, and Tom and I have listened to them talk late into the night about politics in their rooms. Their main reasons seems to be environmental at this point, and they say they just like Obama better. We usually check out Yahoo's Political Dashboard to see who's ahead in the polls.
One day I decided to trick them and I created my own scenario where Obama was in the lead in every single state. Kyle took one look and was overjoyed.

Then I had to break it to him that I manipulated the map. He thought that was the coolest thing ever and had a blast controlling which state would vote for whom. He just couldn't bring himself to give McCain any states, but Reeve convinced him that was unrealistic. Kyle's compromise was to give Rhode Island (the smallest state he could find) to McCain.

Reeve spent a little more time thinking about it and came up with this scenario.

I'm weird, but I find it extremely amusing to be talking about the State of California and have Kyle immediately say, "Oh yeah I know that State, they have 55 votes."

New Post...Finally...At long Last

Finally I'm feeling a bit more like myself again. For the past couple of months I've been very tired (actually having to take naps) and generally queasy. What's wrong with me?? Well..... I'm pregnant! OOOOOOOPPPPS! Baby will be here in April 2009. We're getting over the shock and accepting the reality slowly but surely. The kids are very excited. I've seen my doctor and my midwife and we actually heard the heartbeat...going fast at 150-160 beats per minute.

The kids have been a huge help. They've been patient and cooperative with me. Kyle's favorite way to help out has been to pick things from the garden. Here is a pic of him picking parsley in our much needs-to-be-weeded-herb bed.

He also likes to pick the scallions, basil, and tomatoes. Reeve helps by making food in the kitchen. My stomach was pretty unsettled and making food hasn't been my favorite thing to do lately. Reeve loves to make sandwiches, and he knows how to get leftovers out of the fridge...it's a start. He actually loves being independent and showing Kyle how to make a sandwich. They both know how to pick and clean apples from our apple tree.
They're even kept company buy our adopted hedgehog.

It's the friendliest hedgehog we've ever seen. Most run away when they see us coming outside. Not this guy, he's way more interested in eating the clover in our unmowed lawn. However he did get a little too close to the Red Russian Kale, the kids helped me scare him away.

Reeve and Kyle both have a great sense of play and love to be pirates. Here's Kyle decked out with his pirate gear: compass, telescope, sword, etc...

The swingset is their ship. They named it "The NonStop."

Ahhh they spotted some trouble...

Tommy did have to work on Labor Day, but he was also able to get in some rest and relaxation. In addition to working his day job he's also starting his own company. I'm working on creating a website for him. Right now I'm using a freebie site (there's advertising at the top). It's pretty easy to use, but it's also fairly restrictive with what I want to do. Sigh. It needs a lot of work, but here's the site: www.buildingenergycontrols.com

In between working 2 jobs Tommy's been coaching the kid's soccer team. The first day he helped out with Kyle's Team, and now he's the coach for Reeve's team.

Usually their games are at the same time on Saturday, so I don't get to see Reeve play very much. Kyle loves to score goals.

He has a slight advantage because he has some really good girl players on his team. The other boys are quite sure what to do a lot of the time and they have a tendancy to sit on the field.

They also like to all bunch in around each other...especially at the goalie box.

It's definitely entertaining.

Reeve's team really good too. He's been playing against some really tough teams, and a lot of the kids are 1-1.5 years older than him.



Hopefully it won't take me another month to make an update here. It's hard to believe October will be here next week!

Kids in Yoga, Garden & Canning

Every Monday the kids start their evening out with me in my outdoor yoga class. They actually both really enjoy it and it gives them a good stretch before they play soccer.

About 15minutes into the class Tom picks them up and takes them to soccer practice. The Tomah Area Youth Soccer seems to have some sort of soccer going throughout the spring, summer, & fall for the kids. Right now it's just whoever shows up Monday night they either work on drills or play a pick-up game with the parents. Reeve and Kyle love it. They come home sweaty and happy.

If you scroll back a few posts you can see the above tomato bed in a weedy mess. I put my heavy duty gloves on, got my long neck weed puller, some scissors, string, and went to town weeding and tying up the tomatoes. I braved the many mosquitoes and nasty thorny thistle weeds. I do love the raised beds because they are significantly easier to weed. I was glad I put the stakes in the ground when I planted the tomatoes, but next year I really want to invest in some good tomato cages.

I also started to work on my long beds. I found a ton of tomatoes, which was pretty amazing considering the fact that they were 100% buried in tall nasty weeds. You can see from the above pic that most of my stakes were way too small. The poor tomatoes were actually using the weeds for growing support! I did find a couple of rotting tomatoes, and I threw one over the fence. I must have come close to hitting a sleeping deer because I heard it get up, snort loudly, and then run off into the woods. If you've never heard a deer before they make this snorting noise. It's not a noise you'd expect to hear from a deer. It makes me think this is what a bull must sound like before it charges you...deer can be pretty fierce when confronted, so I was glad the weeds were so tall we didn't see each other and it ran off into the woods.

I had to go on top of the roof to adjust the TV antenna...it's no fun watching the Summer Olympics with a ton of snow. While I was up there I decided to take the camera to get an aerial pic of the garden.

I also took a few pics of the organic corn our neighbor is grown in our fields for his organic dairy cows.


It's hard to see from these pictures, but his corn is some of the finest corn I've seen around here. We've had so much rain that the corn growth has really suffered with most of our neighbors fields having flooding problems.
It looks a heck of a lot better than the field that borders our property as seen in the pic below.

This farmer is not organic and he planted a no till herbicide injected seed that is supposed to kill the weeds as the corn grows. It looks lousy, it's smaller, and it's full of weeds.

I sprayed some clay on our apple trees to ward off the vicious plum curculio

I was supposed to spray the clay on right after the blossoms fall off and then re-apply 3 times, and then after a heavy rain, and weekly for about 10 weeks. I didn't get the clay until I noticed the crescent shape wounds in some of the apples, but hopefully I've saved a few of the apples using the clay. Next year I'll be more vigilant!

This is 16.5lbs of tomatoes from our garden. Yesterday I decided it was time to make my first batch of pasta sauce for the year. I love my Ball Blue Book (for Canning, Freezing, & Dehydrating), but for the life of me I cannot figure out their Tomato Sauce recipe. The recipe calls for 45lbs of tomatoes to make 7 quarts of pasta sauce. The last time I made this pasta sauce I took some notes...I weighed 22.5lbs of tomatoes, and I made 9.5 quarts of sauce! I thought it was because I didn't peel the tomatoes, which I highly reccomend you peel the tomatoes. If you don't the skin becomes leathery and not fun to pick out of your spaghetti. This year I peeled the tomatoes, and cooked them down for 5 long hours. 16.5lbs of peeled & diced tomatoes filled my large stock pot to the brim. While the tomatoes were cooking down (lid off) I sauteed my onions, garlic, & spices. After about 3 hours I added the saute mix and cooked it down for another 2 hours. After 6 long hours in the kitchen my 16.5lbs yielded 7 quarts. I was thrilled with this, but uber confused as to how Ball thinks 45lbs should yield 7 quarts. Was it because I was too lazy to strain out the seeds? Could the straining really make THAT much of a difference. Did I not cook it enough? I cooked it for 5 hours, was I really supposed to cook it for 10 hours? My sauce is a little watery, but we really love it. Also Ball calls for 1/2 tsp of citric acid in each quart...I like using a full tsp. It makes me feel safe and we really like that tangy taste. It's not overwhelming at all.

So far this year I've canned 7 quarts of pasta sauce and 5 quarts of pickles. I have a lot of little cukes growing, so I'm hoping I can can another 5 quarts of pickles.