Pumpkin Carving

For FHE this week we had cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents over to carve pumpkins. That was a lot of pumpkin innards. We rounded the evening out with Halloween chocolate popcorn and a hot chocolate bar. Happy Halloween all!

Brothers

This is what happens every time I put the baby down anywhere: floor, couch, swing, my bed...Luke is right there to talk to Jarom and get in his face. Here they are holding hands and watching cartoons. Yesterday they both fell asleep in the car holding hands, too. This pic was supposed to be my photography lesson on practicing indoor lighting. I changed the white balance to incandescant light and then later Matt told me we actually have white spectrum lights in the living room to mimic sunlight(because it's so cloudy here I get seasonal depression some years). So the point of my ramble is--these pics turned out really blue, but I kind of like it.

Johnson Pumpkin Farm

Jarom in the baby pack--which is he almost getting to chunky to fit in. Luke and Elyse in the kids' soy bean maze

Paul and giant pumpkins

Over eager goat and Elyse

Luke brave enough to feed a goat

Last Saturday, in between sessions of conference, we met the in-laws at a pumpkin farm. The weather was overcast and quite chilly, but we decided to brave it anyway. The kids zipped through the soy bean maze in less than three minutes. They had an indian teepee set up. Luke went inside and loudly voiced his complaint that we lied to him, there was no TV in there (TV--teepee. I guess it sounds the same). After wolfing down oh-so-delicious cider doughnuts--the highlight of my fall season--everyone agreed to try this year's corn maze. Last time we did it, it was almost sun down and drizzling. This year it wasn't dark, but it started raining very hard mid way through the maze. The track became a mud pit, caking our shoes and sock and pants. I wore clogs, which sunk in the mud with each step and had to be yanked out again. And they kept getting larger and larger rings of mud around the rim till I looked like I had Frankenstein feet. With Jarom strapped to my chest, I kept going slower and slower. My group couldn't hear me in the rain and when another group cut in front of me, I completely lost the family. I ended up taking an emergency exit outside the maze and was glad to do it. On my way back to the car, I could hear sobbing coming from somewhere in the maze. That had to be Paul, who wasn't thrilled about going in there in the first place. Oh memories...Maybe someday we'll laugh about it. Next year I'm definitely going on the warmest day of the fall when there are sunny skies and hours before sunset.

Photography Class

Matt and I have been taking an online photography class together and here's a couple of our lessons. Paul was our aperture lesson. If you make your aperture larger, it fuzzes out the background, but your subject is sharp. Jarom's pic was on focal points. We learned how to move the focal point from the center to one of the sides of the frame. And Elyse's pic was going all manual. After metering for light you have to choose your own shutter speed, aperture, and ISO. I don't love how her pics turned out. We still need lots of practice, but it's been lots of fun. I get confused because it's a lot of numbers and I've never been good with those. Sometimes when the numbers get bigger, it means things are smaller and vica versa. It's hard to keep it all straight.

Apple Sauce

There's a tree out back I lovingly think of as our Jacob tree because it totally reminds me of the allegory in the book of Jacob. Long time ago someone grafted cherry branches into the roots of an apple tree. After years and years of neglect it's gone completely wild, producing both inedible apples and cherries. Most people tell us to cut it down, but I love it because it provides a great screen from the neighboring baseball field. We let the kids pick the apples to play with and eat if they feel like. This year, Elyse brought me one and it actually tasted good. The tree is huge this year and the apple boughs are turning out real apples. I bought an applesauce/tomoto sauce press online and we've been canning applesauce this weekend. The kids helped pick and loved cranking the handle to make the sauce. I find the whole thing a sticky, time consuming (not to mention water consuming and it leaves a lot of messy pots to clean) project, but the kids get to help bring something from our yard to the table. I hope it gives them good memories. The tree gave us 31 quarts of applesauce this year. I guess we'll try pruning it and spraying it this year to see what we get next harvest. I still want to plant some pear and peach trees. It will have to be a few less if we're going to keep the Jacob tree.