Labor-Day-Weekend in Review

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In order to ease our driving experience, we decided to leave on Friday night about bedtime, so the kids would sleep in the car. BIG MISTAKE! Neither one of them had much interest in sleeping, and they ended up staying up pretty much the entire way there. Oh well.

Saturday morning we picked apples at an orchard, for making into applesauce. This was something we did every year when I was little, so we thought it would be fun to continue the tradition with the kids (oh yeah, and stock up on delicious and healthy applesauce – high fructose corn syrup need not apply). It was really nice. We had perfect fall weather, sunny but a little cool. Now that I’m used to picking blueberries, raspberries, etc. apple picking goes pretty fast. Plus we picked some, but we bought probably more than half already picked.

When we were done with that, I went off and played some paintball for about 5 hours for a bachelor party. As always, paintball was a lot of fun. I got shot in the neck again, but it wasn’t as bad as last time. I took one in the pinky that hurt pretty bad too, but I didn’t really have too many welts or anything, compared to some of the guys. We played one game where the bachelor could only get out if he was shot on a little square on his chest. I think they counted 16 welts on his torso. Ouch! Anyway, it was a lot of fun, and a lot of fun to hang out with a bunch of old friends.

When I got home, we had to make applesauce late into the night. We made 35 quarts and 11 pints. Not all of it was just for us, but we took the lion’s share. I don’t know what our final count was, but it was substantial! We still haven’t found room for it in the pantry. It was quite the operation, with 5 people all working at the same time, including two canners going.

The next day we went do my dad’s house. The plan was to go swimming and close out the pool for the season, but it had been so cool that we figured it wouldn’t happen. However, the pool temperature was surprisingly pleasant. We also found some time top play Pretty Pretty Princess, and dad won both times…I guess he’s a natural Pretty Pretty Princess. We also came away with an alarming amount of produce, including 7 squash, 5 zucchini, and 2 pumpkins (although one of them is big enough to count for 2 or 3).

Since we were in the canning mood, we decided to come back for round 2: salsa. We had tomatoes from our garden, plus everybody decided to drop off more tomatoes; so many in fact, that we ended up not even using our tomatoes when we canned! But we made 9 1/2 pints of salsa, and again canned late into the night. We’re really putting our canning skills to the test this year!

Finally, Monday was Labor Day and we spent it the way Labor Day aught to be spent: grilling out. Some family friends came over and Evie entertained us with tunes while we ate (as usual). Unfortunately we had to eat and run, since we had the drive back, and driving with 2 small children takes a lot longer than it would otherwise. It was nice though, we were in no hurry, so we even stopped and did some shopping on the way home. Of course, once we got home we had about a zillion things to do, so I ended up exhausted (especially since I spent the previous two nights canning instead of sleeping).

So, in summary, dessert.

Yes, everywhere we went had desert. Not just store bought stuff, but homemade deliciousness. I probably gained 5 pounds over the weekend. But it sure was delicious! If you count all the canning, I’d definitely say this trip was all about food. What better reason to take a trip?

Quote Monday Considers France

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Evie: “When I go to Paris, I want to see a guillotine! Will there be guillotines there?”

I was a little disturbed by this, but I knew where she got it from at least: Madeline and the Bad Hat. But in that book, the boy uses the guillotine on chickens, so she didn’t actually know what a guillotine was for…until she watched Rick Steves’ Paris with us!

Evie: “I wish I was born when they chopped off heads because I really wanted to see a guillotine that chops off heads.”

Sara: “French makes my tongue all confused and twisted up and it doesn’t know what to do.” – Ask her to say monsieur sometime.

Evie, smooching Oliver on each cheek: “Oliver doesn’t know how to smooch any way, so I want to teach him how to smooch the French way first!”

Ingenious Mouse Trap

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We had a mouse at work. That is not the story. The story is how someone from down the hall tried to catch the mouse.

This time the mousetrap was unsuccessful, but it reminded me that I had seen it action before, and it worked. I wondered how I could forget something so awesome, so I decided I better write it down before I forgot again.

  1. Get a trash can with high, smooth walls
  2. Balance a ruler on the edge of the desk, well out over the trash can
  3. Put little bits of cracker or other bait on the end of the ruler

Voilà! The mouse runs out on the ruler to get the cracker, the ruler overbalances, and the mouse falls into the trash can where he waits patiently until you let him out in the morning. Then, when you don’t have the heart to smash in his cute little adorable face, he resumes terrorizing you as normal. It’s kind of a fun game.

I did a quick search on the Internet, and it turns out this is a pretty common trap. (Search for “walking the plank”, which is a fantastic name for this kind of trap by the way)

The results range from the simple:

to the elaborate:

So, next time you need to catch a mouse, you might as well give it a shot. Make him walk the plank! If it doesn’t work, you’re not out anything.

Ollie Update

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Oliver has been officially rolling over lately. He has been rolling over sporadically for weeks, but we are never sure if we should count it, because there was always some extenuating circumstances. First he would roll over when I was sitting on the bed. So I would think, “Well, that doesn’t count, he’s just falling in the crater made by my heinie.” Then I would sit somewhere else and he would roll over and I would think, “Well, I’m still technically on the bed, so maybe I’m helping him somehow.” So there was always some reason why it wasn’t a “real” roll.

Finally however, there can be no doubt. He can do it repeatedly on a flat surface, like the floor. I think he just finally realized that if he wants a toy or something, he can roll over to get to it. I remember that’s how we got Evie to roll over, by offering her some toy just out of her reach. That hadn’t been working on Oliver, because he would just sort of go, “Oh well, I can’t get it,” and either ignore it or cry. This time he was actively trying to get the toy, and rolling over. It looks like it won’t be long before he can roll the other way too. Of course this opens up all sorts of awful possibilities and he can no longer be left alone on the bed.

He also managed to sit up by himself for about 3 seconds. He loves to be in the sitting position, but he hasn’t had the balance to do it by himself. So hopefully he can learn to sit up by himself and then we won’t have to hold him up like that all the time.

He’s also getting pretty good at holding his head up. When he’s lying on his stomach, he just looks like he is ready to crawl away at any second. I know he probably won’t for a long time, but he looks like he’s ready to go.

He seems to be very interested in solid food. If you are holding him and eating, he’ll try to dive out of your hands and take a bite out of anything coming his way. We’ve given him a few tastes and his enthusiasm hasn’t seemed to diminish. Hopefully this means he will switch to solids without much fuss. Evie wasn’t interested in them at all when it was time for her to start on them.

You can get him to laugh, but Oliver is very stingy with his laughs! He smiles big smiles, sometimes he even squeals, but an actual laugh is pretty rare. We get him maybe once every few days or so. Hopefully this doesn’t mean he is going to be very serious when he grows up. I kind of doubt it though, in this family.

Also this week, Ollie went to daycare for the first time. All in all it was much less traumatic for us than when Evie went to daycare for the first time. I just remember being so sad and everything that our little baby was going to be with some stranger all day. With Oliver it was more just like part of the daily routine. I didn’t even feel even the smallest twinge of guilt. He did sob inconsolably for a while to me when I got home from work. I think he was trying to pay me back for abandoning him. Other than that though he seemed to take everything pretty well.

So that’s about it, he’s growing up fast!

I’ve seen this somewhere before

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Now here is a street performer I would pay to see! Seriously, this guy blew my mind. It really gets good around 1:30, so you might want to skip a bit.

Hmm, wait a minute, does this guy remind you of anybody?

All I’m saying is, don’t let Jennifer Connelly babysit around this guy…

Link via FailBlog.