Catching Up - Early Fall Activities

Here are some pictures of our activities so far this fall:

From our church group's fall retreat:


Relay Races



Lily and one of our little friends playing with the ring toss

This my mother's face staring back at me. Throws me EVERY TIME.

At a fall farm festival in Falls Church:

It's all about the U in our house!

Ice cream soothes the savage beasts

Ice cream always gets us a smile.

Daddy field trip day to a museum in DC. (Mommy was working.)

However, running around the Mall was enjoyed a lot more.

We started back with homeschooling once we finished unpacking.

We LOVE Chinese food. But Abby did not learn to eat with chopsticks from us, she did this all on her own!

Love,

Joel, Julie, Abby, and Lily

Raspberry and Apple Picking!

One of our friends invited us to join them for apple and raspberry picking! We met up at a farm in Maryland.

We spent quite a while picking raspberries, but only about 10 minutes picking apples! The lady in charge of the field directed us down to the very end of the field, and we filled our baskets just by going to one our two trees! Amazingly, we picked 40 pounds of apples in those ten minutes.

Once we got home, the real work began. I had to figure out a way to use up and freeze the apples before they could go bad! Thankfully, Joel let me get this apple peeler at the gift shop on the farm. AWESOME INVENTION. I highly recommend it. It peels, slices and cores the apple all at once. Did I mention how awesome it is??

So, here is a picture of the apples once I got done prepping a batch. I froze most of our apples (poured a bit of lemon juice over them first) to save them for later.

Then, we got busy trying a ton of new recipes with our raspberries and apples. Here are our new favorites:

Baked Chicken with Apple Stuffing - This is super easy and very yummy. But we tend to like a little "kick," so I might sneak a couple cranberries into the stuffing mix on the bottom next time.

Honey Baked Apples - The recipe calls for cranberries, but I used raspberries this time. BUT, I bet it would be amazing with cranberries too.

But, I think I overcooked mine. Or, maybe using the muffin tin wasn't the best idea. I thought it would be better to help keep them from tipping over.

This is what they looked like with served up. I definitely need to try this one again to see if I can fix it.

Caramel Apple Pie - If you like caramel apples, then this is the pie for you. I've made this pie twice now, and it is actually pretty easy. I've never made a pie before and was able to do this well. One suggestion I'm gonna try for next time is to put the caramels into a food processor and turn them into shavings. Otherwise you get little gooey caramel pieces stuck in your teeth while enjoying all this yumminess.

It looked a lot better before I attempted to cut it. I haven't mastered that yet.

Here are some other recipes we tried, but I don't have pictures of.

Smoked Sausage and Apple Bake - This one was good, but a little too much sauerkraut for me. Joel liked it more.

Easy Raspberry Chicken - We prepped several of these ahead of time and froze them together in Ziploc bags. Not quite as pretty as the picture, but it is super yummy and easy on our busy days.

Raspberry Chipotle Sauce - Oh my goodness, this stuff is AWESOME. I make this with a pork tenderloin. I made several batches and put them in Ziploc and froze them. Which reminds me, we really need to eat this again very soon!

What we did this Summer

I love this picture I took randomly this summer. The girls were "playing homeschool." Lily was listening to the Addition Fact songs on the iPod (what Abby is dealing with in math right now), and Abby was playing teacher and beauty parlor at the same time. Yup. This is what homeschooling really looks like!  

So, I flaked out this summer from posting. I am so sorry, I feel like I let myself down as much as you guys. But I have a very good reason.

ROACHES.

So that apartment we moved into? Yeah, apparently the entire building is infested with roaches. Of different varieties. By the millions. I couldn't help but see the irony as I was learning more about roaches than I never wanted to know. I can now tell you exactly the life cycle of roaches, what kills them (nothing) and what doesn't (just about everything), and even what their eggs and poop look like. Homeschooling at its finest. IT WAS GROSS AND NASTY.

I really hope ya'll aren't retching right now and still reading.

We did find a new place to live finally, but in the meantime, we went through weekly full extermination sessions - emptying every single cabinet and closet and leaving the house for a full day, come home and put everything back, only to have them come crawling back out of the walls a few hours later. I am not even kidding. It was really that bad. Really.

We finally got into our new (beautiful, clean, safe neighborhood, and most importantly, insect-free) townhouse almost two weeks ago, and we are feverishly unpacking and trying to get re-settled.

Last week I added it up, and as a family, if you count the month long stays with family, hotels, and temporary apartments, we have moved eight times. In the past two years. To say we are all completely sick of it would be an understatement.

What else did we do this summer? We took advantage of the plethora of summer camp programs in our area, and the girls participated in church camp (VBS) for two weeks, Spanish immersion camp for three weeks, and one week of "ballet camp." (The girls really miss ballet.) And right now Abby is finishing up two weeks of "math camp", where they are working on the dreaded addition math facts. We're hoping this will get us over the hump when we get back to homeschool full-time next week. And we also did a joint birthday party for the girls in July.

 

And I have been working on networking and drumming up more coaching business. My website designer is feverishly (I hope) working on the re-design of my website. So far all I have is my new logo to share.

But, mainly, our hobby this summer has been apartment hunting and the murdering of mutant bugs. God, I am so ever thankful we are done with all of that.

Olympics Homeschool Lesson

Joel decided he wanted to do a little homeschool unit lesson with the girls on the Olympics. So I printed some things off the Internet and they went to town. I was very impressed!


The following weekend, he found out that the National Children's Museum was having an "Olympics Event." Well, of COURSE we had to go!

Here are the girls with the torches they made. Ignore the pouting for the camera.

They also had a "track" obstacle course for the kids to do. Abby was "too cool," but Lily loved it and did it over and over. And over and over.

Here is Lily "jumping" the hurdles.

Well, we were a little to prissy to actually jump.

And then we colored some Olympics related coloring sheets.

And even more cool (well, at least to us parents), was that there was a REAL, former Olympic medalist there to sign autographs and take pictures with the kids. Her name is Tiombe Hurd, and she still holds the record for the Triple Jump. Nicest gal.

Abby wanted to know where she kept all of her medals, and she laughed and told her that her Dad had some, and then she kept the rest in a case at home. Abby looked up at me, trying to decide if she would share her future medals with me. I think the jury is still out on that!

And of course, no outing is complete (at least in that heat!) without a visit to get ice cream! Which, of course, the girls say was their favorite part of the day. Little stinkers.

Happy Birthday to Abby and Lily

This year for the first time, I combined the girls' birthday parties. Normally, I really don't like doing this, as I want the girls to have their own birthday celebration. Well, this year, Mama just really needed a break.

I had promised them a pool party for their birthday (the place we were supposed to live in Spain had a pool), which goes to show you my #1 parenting rule still makes sense. Never ever promise what you aren't 100% sure you can deliver. Uggghh. Luckily, someone told me about this great "splashpad" in Alexandria, and we could hold a birthday party there inexpensively. SOLD.

 

Birthday Girl #1

Birthday Girl #2. She was much too busy collecting rocks to pose for a picture.

Our setup: Drinks, food, and balloons. Instant party.

Singing Happy Birthday

And the birthday cake. Thank you, Costco!

Fun on the Splashpad!

That's Lily in the yellow shirt.

You can barely see her, but Abby is in the rainbow shirt, just left of center.

Afterwards, we came back home, napped and opened presents. Much much thanks to all who spoiled our girls for us!

Oh, and here is a picture of the famous Barbie dollhouse! (I found this on an amazing Black Friday deal last Christmas season. But then I realized it would probably get destroyed in our move, so we kept it saved for their birthdays instead.) It literally is almost as tall as I am. The girls should get several, several, years of play out of it!

On their actual birthday, we let the girls pick out what we would have for dinner that day. Abby chose pizza and cupcakes. Lily chose McD's. They thought that was the COOLEST thing ever, hahaha. Takes so little to make a kid happy.