play

It's so fun to watch and listen to these two play together.  Most recently you can find them playing camping, office, or hunting.  The first two require getting out lots and lots of toys and setting up "camp" or the "office."  When playing office there is usually a lot of work to be done.  This requires crayons, stamps, markers, tape, cardboard, and paper.  Hunting usually requires lots of animals and Emma's kitchen utensils to "take all the meat." 

Either way, listening to their imaginations run wild never gets old.

peppers + cornbread muffins

We've been enjoying a little green in the house this winter thanks to these fun pepper plants. These are a Siberian pepper called Grandpa's Home Pepper.  We ordered the seeds because it said they had more than 50 little peppers per plant and that they produced all winter in low light.  Both were true.  The hardest part about these was getting them to sprout.  There were only maybe 15 or so seeds in the pack and only two sprouted....months after we planted them.  We had pretty much given up but kept watering them anyway.  It paid off.

 These tiny little peppers have some serious flavor. We've been throwing two or three into anything that can handle some spice.  We've also been saving the seeds, drying on the counter, since we are enjoying them so much. 

I made some peppery corn bread muffins and tossed in a few of these peppers minced up.  Yum!

Peppery Corn Bread Muffins
adapted from Gooseberry Patch

1 c. yellow cornmeal
1 c. flour
2 Tbsp. sugar
1 Tbsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. chili powder
1/2 tsp. dried basil
2/3 c. chopped peppers (green, yellow, red, or a combo)
1/4 c. corn
1/4 c. butter
1 c. milk
2 eggs

Stir together cornmeal, flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, chili powder, and basil.  Saute peppers and corn in butter for 3-4 minutes.  Beat together eggs and milk.  Mix together the pepper/corn mixture, milk mixture, and flour mixture.  Add to greased muffin cups.  Bake at 400 for 15-10 minutes.  Makes 12 muffins.  


In other gardening news, we got the greenhouse all cleaned out (and by we I mean Ryan and the kids while I was at a stampin' up party with my friends!) and ready to plant.  We are going to start our tomatoes and peppers (inside) this week and some greens and radishes will be making their way into the greenhouse.  I did manage to get all of our seeds organized and inventoried and we put in a couple orders for some things we were missing.  I'm looking forward to lots of gardening time this year!  

 

helper

It's cold and snowy here. 

So thankful for my carrying-in-the-wood little helper!

car talk

It's Thursday...which means Bobcat Day at our school.  Gotta love jeans and t-shirt day.  This is an oldie (taken before Christmas.) 

One of the fun things about Mason being in preschool this year is that he gets to come in to school with me every morning.  Two days a week Emma rides in to town with us too.  Those days in the car are full of singing and story telling and any tricks I can pull out to keep them from going all "he's-looking-out-my-window!!"  You know those moments, right? 

But two days a week it's just me and the boy and some pretty fun conversations.  Here are a few snippets:

Me: Mason...look there's some deer!
Mason: (almost in tears) but I don't want to see the does, where are the bucks?
Me: I don't know.  Where do you think they are?
Mason: Oh, probably in the trees.  They're much smarter you know.

Mason:  How do you become a grandma?  When does it happen?  You don't have to look old.

Mason: I'm going to count the whole way to school.  1...2...3..4....187!  We're here.  (That was a fun one:)

Mason: When are we going to Steamboat again?  You know that dad doesn't need a map to get there?  Remember when you got lost three times?

And most currently Mason feels it is his job to announce the speed limit and make sure that I'm following it. 

Mom, it's 65. 
Mom, it's 55.
Mom, it's 40.  Why do we always have to go slower in town?  I don't like going slower. 

How come your car has 100 on it if we never get to go 100? 

You know that dad's big white truck can't do 65 with a full load of wood?  You can go less than the speed limit, but not more.  Mom, you're going more.  

Mom, it's 35.
Mom, it's 15.  (insert really sad voice).  This is when we enter the school parking lot.  He always tries to convince me that it really is 51 and we need to go faster.  Like a race car. 

And my favorite:

Mom, God loves me infinity. 

favorites

The two favorites of the moment...Cow for Mason (always has been the #1 choice) and Karly-Baby for Emma.

It's a good thing these two can make me laugh when I'm about to lose my mind.

Most recent reason:

I'm working on a difficult knitting project that I planned on giving away this Christmas, but I wasn't even half way done with it when that time came around.  Sooo, last night I decide to pull it out and work on it.  I find my way into the pattern and realize I have three needles, so I throw one back into my knitting bag.  I do a couple rows and realize my tension is way off from the last time I worked on it.  I keep going.  After a few more rows I'm a little shocked at the difference in the gauge.  I show Ryan. We laugh about how pregnancy must really affect your knitting tension.  I keep going.  I'm not at all happy with how it looks, but I keep going trying to make it tighter until my eyes fall out and I go to sleep. 

Today at naptime I pull it out again.  I'm looking at it trying to figure out how to make it tighter.  I look at the pattern again.  I see something about size 3 needles.  I look at the huge needles in my project.  They're size 9.  Yes, size 9!  It all starts to become clear.  Both my size 3 and size 9 needles are green.  Apparently I pulled out my project and knit the first row onto a green size 9 needle.  That's about when I realized that I had 3 needles, so I kept the two that matched (the 9s) and threw the size 3 into my bag.  Funny right? Yeah, maybe if I wasn't doing things like this all the time.  It's a small miracle that I finish any knitting projects:)

growing

One of the things we're most looking forward to this year is growing, growing, growing our family of four to a family of five!

 

Yup, we have a new little bundle of joy set to arrive the end of May.  Super exciting around here!  

 

 Some of the details:

We found out in September.  I'm currently 20 weeks.  We had our ultrasound last week and everything is moving along perfectly.  We decided not to find out the gender.  Mason is convinced it's a boy and Emma keeps saying (well singing) "We don't know if it's a boy or a girl... but God has a special surprise for us."--which is just about the sweetest thing ever.

I'm feeling really good now. The first trimester was pretty rough (throwing up multiple times for 56 days straight.)  I don't think I left the couch except to go to work for all of October.  Bless Ryan for putting up with me and being so awesome with the kiddos!

I'm pretty much craving spicy and salty things.  My fellow teachers know they can't bring crackers or pretzels to lunch without passing a few my way.   I've got the peperoncinis and flamin' hot cheetos taken care of.  I've also been loving yogurt and grapefruit. 

We have absolutely no names picked out.  The kids are set on Race Car if it's a boy and Princess Rosie if it's a girl.  Guess we'll decide in May! Feeling super blessed and excited for a new little one! 

christmas

Happy New Year!  Christmas sort of flew by and at the same time we slowed down and enjoyed everything about it.  Now everything is packed away, waiting for the magic again next year.  We're staying busy, filling up the last few days before we return to school and our "normal" routine.  Here are a mixture of Christmas pictures all the way from Greeley to our house.  Lots of cousin time, grandparents time, cookies, singing and laughter.

 

 

 Now it's just finishing up thank you notes, wishing for fresh snow to play in, lots of hot cocoa, and new bedtime stories.  Ryan and I have lots of goals and plans for this year...I think it's going to be a good one!

trim the tree

We decorated our Christmas tree last Sunday.  On Monday Mason learned all about trimming the tree at preschool and since then he has informed everyone who talks about decorating a tree that it's called trimming the tree.  I always love getting the ornaments out and remembering the different times we received them.  

 

 The highlight of their day is doing the advent calendar before bedtime.  I guess it's alright that I haven't gotten around to wrapping any presents yet since this is their new favorite hangout. 

We're loving these cold wintery days.  We made eggnog bread for breakfast and a good friend of ours is coming over to can cranberry sauce before we start on our list of Christmas cookies to bake. 

wordless wednesday

giving thanks

It's December (yeah!), but here are a few pictures from our Thanksgiving holiday.  We had some major awesome family time from Thursday all through Sunday.  I loved seeing my little ones play with their grandparents and great grandparents.  They spent most of their time hunting all the elk in the forest and making elk stew and elk rootbeer.  And playing train conductor. 

 

 My family came on Friday and we had tons of cousin time full of staying up way too late playing games, getting up way too early with the little munchkins, eating turkey and cinnamon rolls, having snowball fights, playing trains, building snowmen, and just being together. 

 So thankful for my sweet family!

snow day

It snowed all weekend and today we woke up to this.  Actually I woke up at 5:30 as usual and about 30 seconds later I got the call from our school district that school was cancelled.  Awesome!  I crawled right back in bed.  

So today will be spent at home and will probably be a repeat of yesterday: 

We're loving an extra day at home.  It makes for a very short week, with just school tomorrow.  I should probably grade papers and clean the house.  But we're busy playing the piano, throwing snowballs, drinking hot cocoa, and baking bread.  Is it too early to start Christmas cookies?

tomato herbed pizza crust

It's no joke that we like our pizza around here.  We usually  have it about once a week.  We love just about anything and everything on it too.  The kids mostly beg for olives.  We have a new crust that we really like now too.  Just substitute half of the water in your favorite pizza dough recipe with tomato sauce.  Then chop up some fresh herbs and knead them into the dough.  We used basil and parsley in this one. 

My little helper:

oh, hello.

Well, somehow October came and went and I hardly even turned the computer on...let alone do this blog thing.  We've been plenty busy with other things around here and fall sort of seemed to slip by. 

 

This has been one crazy start to the school year.  Learning several new curriculums, gaining six new students in seven weeks and mentoring a new teacher has kept me on my toes.  Parent-teacher conferences are now behind me and the stack of papers to grade is slowing decreasing as I finally get into a routine.

 

The garden and greenhouse supplied us with plenty of food to keep us busy.  We canned 25 pints of green beans and turned ten gallons of cabbage into sauerkraut.  We had our first frost weeks ago and have had a couple snow storms as well.    

 

 We dug up all the potatoes.  This is all the fingerlings, most of the purple vikings, and about a third of the sangres (the red ones).  They are delicious.  We figure we got about 90 pounds total.  They keep finding their way into soups, stews, and breakfast potatoes.   We ended up with lots of tomatoes too.  We pulled all the green ones before the greenhouse had a frost and made a lovely green tomato pie. 

 After we opened up the garden for the chickens, we also found a few other visitors. 

 Last weekend we spent Saturday with Grammie and Grandpa down at their property.  The boys got the rest of the siding on the bunkhouse.  Brats and sauerkraut were on the menu for lunch! It was a crisp fall day...beautiful all around.

 That pretty much brings us to this morning.  All costumed up and ready for the preschool party.  Mason was a superhero and Emma was a cowgirl. 

These cuties sure help keep it all in perspective. 

Tomorrow brings November.  I'm looking forward to a new month, maybe not such a whirlwind.  We're spending the day butchering our older flock of chickens and cleaning out the coop.  Time to fill the freezer once again.  So much to be thankful for!