Squeezing out the last bit of summer

After a week of cold weather, we had a break of warm weather. Some friends who live on a lake invited us to swim Tuesday afternoon. We rushed through school and made it out to the lake about 2:15 pm. The day was warm but the lake was pretty cold. I guess those 38 degree nights really take a lot of heat out of a lake. But the children still enjoyed it. They spent more time on the beach than in the water. Aaron made an castle with a huge wall guarding it.

Stephen amused the younger ones by letting himself be covered with sand.

We ended up staying for dinner also (thanks Michelle!) and all of the children got into the sand castle building mode. They made a solid like of walls along the whole beach. Whenever a big wave from a motor boat came by, they would yell "red alert" and try to block the wave with boards or their bodies so that their walls would not be destroyed.

Stephen made an island castle and called it Cair Paravel.

My Clever Husband

Last Thursday I had a mystery date set up by my dh. He had been telling me for about a week that I would love my date but he wouldn't tell me any details. Then the day of the date arrived and I got 4 hints via email during the course of the day. Here are the hints.

Hint 1: Remember the movie das boot? That reminds me of your surprise tonight.
On a boot with Germans nearby.

So now I start thinking about a boat ride. Boot meaning boat in German. I know that there is a dinner cruise on the Saginaw river and a wine and cheese boat ride on the Au Sable river but since Joe isn't too wild about boats, I can't imagine that we're on a dinner cruise.

Hint 2: Communion elements will be present.

I get this one right away. Wine and bread.

Hint 3: From a strip mall to a freeway.

I email him back saying "We're going to meet one of our German last named friends at a strip mall and drive down the freeway to the dinner cruise. My dh emails back and says that I'm way way off.

Hint 4:
When you go to Kim's house you also see Dale's.
When you go to the beach you see sand.
When you go to the florist you see a rose.

Now I am really confused. It seems like one of those logic puzzles that you got on the SAT. I have no idea what he is talking about.

So in the evening, I'm still thinking about the boat and the three couples that have German last names. It turns out that I am right on one of the German couples. We go to their house and pick them up. After leaving from their house, I finally think that perhaps boot doesn't mean boat but actually means boot. Then I think "the boot of Italy" and there is an Italian restaurant that used to be in a strip mall and is now located somewhat near the freeway that runs through town.

So hint 1 was going to an Italian restaurant with our German friends, hint 2 was bread and wine, and hint 3 related to the restaurant's move. But I couldn't figure out how hint 4 helped. It turned out that the last three words (Dale's sand rose) when said together sound just like the restaurant's name. Wasn't my husband clever?

The date (which I did love as he had predicted) was a Tuscany wine dinner. The restaurant served us outdoors on the patio and we were served family style. They had four different wines and they explained why they had chosen these wines to accompany the food. The weather was cooperative and we all had a wonderful time on the patio drinking very good wine and eating very good food.

Cider pressing!

Saturday afternoon we went to a friend's house and pressed cider. He has an old cider press and 8 big old apple trees and he invites the relatives and neighbors (we were former neighbors) to help with the work and take some fresh cider home. It is an annual event that we always enjoy.

Stephen, Deb, and Aaron pick the apples out of the water....

... and put them in the hopper. Nathan is turning the crank which smashes them and puts them in a barrel below.

Then once the barrel is full, it is moved to the cranking area and someone turns the screw and presses out the cider. It is delicious and depending on the apple it can be strong or light, tart or sweet.

This man also has our old tractors and is trying to sell them for us. My dh was able to take the kids for a ride on the one that our friend has fixed.

Then, just as we were about done, we noticed the balloons in the sky. Our annual balloon festival was also this weekend.

Catch up Day

I've got to catch you up on some of our activities. It's been a busy week with the start of school and the garden still producing and some great activities in our town. So to start you off, here is a picture of our latest tractor accessory. We're using it for bringing firewood from the woods to our firewood stacks. The children are also enjoying rides in it.

I made an amazing Skillet Barbequed Pork Chops from the Cooks Illustrated magazine last week. It tasted fantastic. And the sauce was amazing.

Nathan saw this bird in our woods. It isn't a good picture since it was taken through the screen and at a high zoom. He is mostly gray with a red V on the back of his head. We've never seen him before. He turns out to be a Northern Flicker.

And I made pickles this past Friday after school. The yellow pickles are watermelon pickles and the red jar is pickled beets.

And last but definitely not least, Aaron is learning to ride his bike without training wheels. He seems to be taking to it pretty well. He's only had a couple of falls so far. We're a little slow on the uptake with bikes since we don't live where a child can bike very far. But once they learn, they have a great mountain biking trail in our woods to train on.

Tomatoes and Onions

Well, I canned the last of the tomatoes (for me) on Monday. I also made salsa (pictured below). Now my "U-pick" tomato patch officially opens. It is a good thing that we have friends that like to pick our garden crops when we're finished with them. Altogether I canned 38 qts and 8 pints of tomatoes and 7 pts of salsa. That should be enough to keep these boys in spaghetti sauce this winter.

Nathan harvested some of my onions for me. These were the bunching onions that I didn't pick when they looked like spring onions or green onions. So I guess they will go down in the basement with the rest of the onions.

What you do if you don't watch TV

We've had a good first week of school. I've taught half days last week and this week, we'll jump into a little bit longer day. This weekend I made two kinds of jelly. The one on the right is corn cob jelly. I got the recipe from my friend Betsy and since I also picked the last of the sweet corn (sigh), I decided to make a small batch to see what it was like. It turned out pretty good. There isn't a lot of flavor in it. It is supposed to taste like apple jelly. But it is pretty.

The one on the left is Niagra grape jelly. It smells and tastes like the Concord grape jelly but it is a lovely yellow color.

And the children were in building mode this week. When they weren't in school, Deb and Aaron made this elaborate system of roads and bridges with the erector set boards in the basement.

Then since the weather was so good this weekend, I shooed them outside. They made an extensive road and city system with chalk and their matchbox cars. They must have worked on it for 4 or 5 hours on Saturday.

This is Deb with her "country house".

This is Aaron's "main house".

Stephen joined them after a while. At the end of the day Saturday, the front concrete pad looked like this! Complete with swimming pools with diving boards, a hospital, a fire department, a police station, a bank, a pizzeria, a library, a botanical garden, an electronics store, and a race track.

They had so much fun that they worked on it all Sunday afternoon as well and filled the back concrete pad. The children called it Carville.

First Day of School

We started school today. It went pretty well. Aaron and Stephen are excited and Deb is also. She's starting on a "real" mathbook this year. Nathan is being dramatic. Yesterday he wore black to mourn the end of summer.

We just did the basics and were done by lunchtime. It has to be the smoothest I've ever had for a school start. Maybe just getting done with last year's school three weeks ago helped! We'll add the history and science parts next week.

Of Woods and Food

This past weekend was just gorgeous at Cold Feathers Farm. It was sunny and warm, but not too hot or too humid. My dh spent a great deal of the time working on making our trails level. He took a couple of high spots and filled in some low spots. It is a little hard to tell in this picture, but the trail is very level now. Can't wait to try it out during cross country season!

He even put in a culvert to help keep the trail dry.

While the guys were working in the woods, I roasted one of our chickens (looking very much like a turkey here) in our charcoal grill. It tasted very good. I had to look up directions for roasting turkeys since the directions for chickens weren't going to cut it.

I also made a great gazpacho with garlic croutons. It was delicious! I cut the vegetables by hand rather than use the food processor so it was nice and chunky.

Star Wars Movie Afternoon!

There is a family in town whose older girls have never seen the Star Wars movies. So we had a movie night last March and watched Episode IV. We watched Episode V last Thursday much to the enjoyment of the children. And our friends liked it as well. Of course when you advertise a Star Wars movie night, more children want to come. So we had 3 families worth of children plus ours over to watch it.