Thanksgiving 09

Marc and Shannon came over with their kids, and a few others. We cooked the turkey with oranges this year, sweet potatoes with apples and cinnamon/nutmeg, Green beans with caramelized onions, Cran-orange-Kumquat sauce, and raw cranberries covered with honey and rolled in powdered sugar, Spaghetti-squash with spinach/tomatoes/green pepper/cilantro, stuffing, gravy, ageratum potatoes, Shannon’s home made whole wheat rolls, frog-eye salad, and a big platter of chocolate chip cookies (most of the kids only ate cookies). Lots of pies for dessert. The kids decided to eat outside in their tree/bush house – saved us from having to clean up spills! Lots of kids – I think there ended up being 10 kids and 7 adults? It was fun.

Monster Caterpillar!!!!

This big guy was on the front doorstep last night, and was still there thismorning. Didn't want the cat to eat em, so we scooped im up, and put em in the old hermit crab cage. We're going to see if e turns into a butterfly :). He's actually bigger than the pict shows - he's all scared and scrunched up in the pict ;)






Caterpillar update - Dec 6th

The caterpillar disappeared out of the cage (don't know how, or who helped him out) the kids found the above this morning by Heather's bookshelf. Apparently this kind of caterpillar does not climb up a stick, and wrap himself in a cocoon... looks like he shed his skin? and then turned into a black cocoon? The black thing is alive - the end of it wiggles when we move it. Pretty crazy huh?

Ah, the simple pleasures in life :)

Kumquats - we picked them green to give the trees a little more resources for settling into their new home. Eating them as they get ripe - ymmm.



What is more fun than playing in the leaves?

Nov 8th 2009

Some of the plants we put in yesterday, they are supposed to grow in full shade, we'll see if they survive in the front yard forest!

The kids were cute today, got a pict of them all dressed up for church.

Thursday Nov 5th Joy School fire station picts. Thanks for the picts Nicole!

Baking :)

Irene’s bread recipe

Dry ingredients: mix together:
5 cups of all purpose flour + 2 more cups after it is mixed
1 cup sugar
1 cup potato flakes
1 cup powdered milk
2 tsp salt
2 Tbs yeast

Wet ingredients:
4 cups of water
1 stick of butter
3 eggs
2 tsps Vanilla

Throw all of the dry ingredients into the bread mixer, mix up. Mix up all the wet ingredients (melt butter). Slowly add wet to dry with mixer going. Let mix for a couple minutes. Slowly add 2 more cups of flour. Mix for 5 minutes. It is a very wet/sticky dough. Wet your hands with water to handle it so it won’t stick to you.

Let dough rise for an hour (or overnight in the fridge)

Roll it out into what you want to use it for – let raise another 30-40 minutes.

Bake 350° for 20-30 minutes (depending on the pan/loaf etc. used)

Use bread – as hamburger buns, sloppy Joe buns, wrap bread around little hot dogs + cheese, all variety of sandwiches, etc. etc. etc. You can also use this for cinnamon rolls – just roll out, add cinnamon/sugar, roll up, and cook like a cinnamon roll!

Trick-or-treating

Heather went to a birthday/Halloween party at her friend Elana's, we ended up going trick-or-treating with them - I did not bring the camera for that one :( thought we were just going to pick her up and run back home.

We went around to the houses on our street though - here are picts from that!





our cat went trick-or-treating with us. (you can just barely see her below)



This was the spooky house - he had sound effects, and everything!

James - Anikan
Heather - a wizard
Autumn - dragon

Trunk - or- treat!

It was a drizzly night, but that did not stop the die-hards! Candy is flowing plentifully at the Turner house ;). There was another little boy with the same outfit as James, they had a lightsaber battle during the costume parade.

Joy School Halloween Party!

What a mess!!!! we had fun though. We learned about spiders. After watching a youtube where a spider caught a fly, wrapped, and then ate it - we tried to wrap each other - in TP. The spider made it look easy, it's actually pretty hard (although I think spiderweb is stronger than TP, so that prob made it easier for the spider). We also tossed fake spiders into the pumpkins - to see how hard it was to catch a bug.





Almost finished crafts:

Pumpkins they painted

This was a really fun one. We mixed dish soap in with paint/die, made bubbles by blowing into the paint with straws, and then pushed the paper onto the bubbles. You can see where the bubbles where on the paper, very fun, made really neat designs! Then glued the papers into little spiders.



Saying hello to the gerbils.




Cooking time! We made spiders out of a cinamon roll, pretzels, and chocolate chip eyes. We also made mummies in a blanket! mmmm.







Bowling with a pumpkin!







Dress up in old costumes from years gone by:








Painting pumpkins. They were little chinese carry-out boxes, painted orange, then black eyes/nose/mouth added... little green twisty on the top, and roasted pumpkin seeds inside.






Oct 27th 09

Painting Pumpkins: