New Tradition

What do you do with decorative pumpkins once the season is over?  Start a new family tradition of making pumpkin puree!  E and I tested out our abilities at making pumpkin puree while the boys napped.  She was cute.  Touching the inside of the pumpkin was "yuck" to quote her. 

After our success with her small pumpkin we decided to try our hand with the Cinderella pumpkin.  The boys were up by this time so she wanted to make sure they got to touch the goo.  K's response was the same he heard his sister say... "YUCK."  I thought the Cinderella pumpkin was very pretty on the pan. 

The process is really quite simple and I do love pumpkin pie made with fresh pumpkin!  I'm not sure how many cups of puree we'll end up with when this is over but I see lots of pumpkin recipes in our future.  :)

UPDATE: The final count was 12 cups.  If we had a bigger freezer we could have made more!  There is always next year.  I'm crossing my fingers for a stand-up deep freeze after we move.  We two growing boys we'll definately need to buy in bulk.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Wishing everyone a Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Parker's Rafting Trip

Parker was able to take a rafting trip while he was in Oregon.  He had a great time.  I am so glad he got the chance to catch some down time and do something fun on the weekend instead of always working or being stuck in a hotel room somewhere.

Veterans' Day Parade

E's school was in our town's Veterans' Day parade.  She was so excited she was going to ride in a float!  She was a little disappointed to find out the float was actually a trailer which she has ridden on numerous times.  The kids still had a great time waving flags and honoring all the men and women who have served Our Country.

Beautiful November Day

I keep thinking we are out of beautiful days to play outside and then God provides another one for us to enjoy.  We usually take a picnic meal to eat and then play until we drop. 

Trick or Treat

This year we dug in our dress up box again and found these goodies.  I love it when things are free.  One of these years I may have to spend money on costumes but so far we have found everything we need already in the house!

Tinkerbell was the final costume choice of the day.

What a cute pirate!

K would tell people thank you about three times.

Vaseline

Well, what a day!  Boy did I have a surprise when I got K up from his nap.  I had just changed his sheets that morning so of course a mess was sure to follow.  Little did I know how difficult to clean this mess would be.  In his room above his changing table was a shelf that had a basket of items I'd sometimes need with the baby.  After K kept climbing the table I moved it to the closet but the shelf remained and so did the basket of items.  Monkey K decided to climb his dresser and reach over to the shelf to retrieve the valuable basket of "goodies."  So evidently he enjoyed the beginning of his nap very well.  He opened the jar of vaseline and gave himself a new "do".  Have you ever tried getting vaseline out of hair?  Me either, and let me tell you - it is NOT easy.  I washed his hair three times with dish soap.  Not much help.  I covered his hair in cornstarch (google said to do it)  didn't help either. I skipped the idea of using whiskey since it said it'd burn...Maybe the whiskey was for the mom!  ;)

 I ran to the store and got Dawn dish soap and the ad is right... "Dawn takes grease out of your way!"  I ended up washing it 3 more times with Dawn just to get it squeaky clean.  He was not happy with all the hair washing but I didn't want everything in the house greasy.

Oh Kelman, I'm scared to see what you'll be into next...