NHS for Curly

So proud of Curly tonight when he was inducted into the National Honor Society. Service Clubs are so much work, but they are also very rewarding.

I'm excited to see where this adventure leads him.

Wordless Wednesday - Gamer's Week

 

Last Day of Fall Break

I kept telling the kids we had until midnight on Monday to get our goals finished up. Baby Doll worked most of the day trying to finish cleaning her room. I dehydrated the last of the hot peppers and we handed out fliers for the girl scout food drive on Friday.

Curly had football, but through a weeklong team effort, he and my sweetie (mostly my sweetie) transformed his truck.

These are before or halfway through the process if you like.

These are after (sorry, it gets dark so fast nowadays).

They have gotten rid of nearly all the rust!

The Dog Walker and I published his 4th book in the Samy Kind series for Kindle and we are just waiting for approval on the paperback. Look for them on Amazon.

Things we didn't finish. Bedrooms, the light fixture in Curly's room, Baby Doll's Silver Award proposal (partly done).

Burrito finished piecing the last quilt top for his Eagle Project and we got the last of our ballots finished and turned in.

We have had a very productive and happy Fall Break, with 4.0 report cards all around.

Life is good.

Fall Break - Saturday

A beautiful day! I did another picking of red tomatoes and we had enough to make a big pot of tomato soup. 🍅 We ate plenty for dinner and Crafty took some home to her boyfriend. There was still enough to put 4 quarts in the freezer.

The girls got caught up in trying on costumes and they even pulled me in.

Crafty came home so we could change over her tires and get her ballot finished. We convinced her to go to the Pumpkin Promenade with us.

At 7:30, Curly, Baby Doll, and I went to the Jordan River temple and we did baptisms in the evening. Such a great way to end the day.

Fall Break 2024

It has been an amazing Fall Break so far!! We set some big goals and we are pushing to finish them. Baby Doll has completed three training courses for her Girl Scout Silver Award and now she is working on her proposal. 

Curly and I bought paint yesterday so that he could work on getting rid of the rust on his truck. 

I am working on the final edit for the Dog Walker's 4th book.

Together, we cleared most of the garden and finished the canning. We also cleaned the garage. It took us two days, but it looks great!

We replaced the trampoline pad and changed all the tires over to the winter ones. 

We joined Grandpa for trick or treating at the care center.

I was in charge of and played a rousing game of volleyball at the church with 22 other people for 2 hours. And today, my sweetie took the afternoon off so we could take a drive in the mountains.

Most of the leaves had dropped, but we found some beautiful ones in Vivian Park.

We also saw a big horn sheep!!

He came running straight down that steep slope and he stopped on the road right in front of our van. He turned and looked at us and ran straight back up.

We hung out at the park for a bit, then we drove through Provo and in to Spanish Fork. Glades is the best shake around!

Such good times.

Fall Break ends Monday night. Still lots of time to do great things.

Little Women - Sandy Arts Guild

A few months ago, Bossy and Gamer attended an event at Wheeler Farm. Everyone was put into a drawing and lots of names were pulled. Gamer won four tickets to Little Women put on by the Sandy Arts Guild.

Bossy decided to make it a sisters thing, so she invited Baby Doll, Scout, and adopted sister K to attend with her. But as the chosen day got closer, Bossy had so much homework and commitments with her kids that she bowed out and offered me her ticket.

We caught a selfie in the restroom before the show. We were all pretty excited!

No photography after the show started, but we grabbed one more in the auditorium before the lights went down.

The show was great!! The performers were awesome and the costuming was so fun.

The only bad part was the fact that it was performed at a middle school. My knees were crunched up in the back of the seat ahead of me. I actually moved during the intermission. My seat wasn't as good, but I had an empty one to stretch out in.

Such a fun Girls Night Out!

Thanks for the tickets, Bossy and Gamer.

Wordless Wednesday - Menstrual Bracelets Service Project

 

To be shared with girls in South America!

Beauty's Etsy Shop

My cute DIL has created her own Etsy Shop and she would love to have you visit!

Check out BloominRaccoon

I'll bet you can find something you like...

Making Jelly

On Saturday, my dear friend, Pauline, texted me to see if we wanted to come over and picked the grapes from her tiny vineyard. We were so excited! I love the scent of concord grapes juicing in my kitchen. 

We grabbed some buckets and Baby Doll and I climbed into Curly's truck. He drove the mile or so and we were there in no time. We brought home 4 buckets!!

But we had already planned to pick the green tomatoes, tomatillos, and peppers to make enchilada sauce, so that took precedence.

That equals 19 quarts, just in case you want to know.

I juiced some of the grapes yesterday and more this morning and then I recruited Curly and Baby Doll to help me make jelly.

Curly did most of the stirring.

Baby Doll helped prep jars for sealing. 

I made sure everything got done. We finished 13 batches and then I ran out of pectin.

I am juicing the final batch of grapes while I write this for you, so we will be making a few more batches of jelly tomorrow. 

So grateful to my friend and to God for a bountiful harvest.

Saturday Immunizations

Saturday morning dawned bright and clear. My sweetie was up with the sun. Me? Not so much. But by 9:00, I was good to go. We were just waiting for Scout.

It was time to grab some shots.

Granger Medical was doing a drive-thru clinic and Scout, Curly, and Baby Doll all needed COVID and flu shots. My sweetie and I just needed COVID. We went to the first clinic a couple of weeks ago and did flu, but they ran out of the COVID vaccine before it was our turn. It is a sweet way to get it done quickly. That first day we only waited for a couple of cars.

So we piled the kids in my Buick and we hit the road. There were about 25 cars waiting when we got there, so we decided "reward first, shots second" and we drove a couple of blocks to the In-N-Out Burger for an early lunch. I'm an idiot, no pics.

We spent 45 minutes eating and we figured that would give the line time to die down... it was BIGGER!!

So we got in line and prepared to wait. My sweetie wanted to leave, but it is rare to have all 3 kids trapped in my car...

So we waited.

And we told stories. It took me a while to realize that my youngest 3 knew very little about our lives with the oldest kids.

It took us an hour and a half to get everyone through that line!! And it was SO much fun!

After the shots, Scout treated us all to Swig.

Such a good day.

Guest Blogger: Corn Maze 2024 by the Dog Walker

 It's back to another time of year of setting up an outside display for by-passers. As for all these years, I've been doing a corn maze for a long time. A lot of times with new updates of how it goes. This year, I added new blowups that I bought when they were on clearance last year. That's right. The new blow ups are the Sanderson sisters from Hocus Pocus! I thought it would be a perfect addition for the display this year, along with all the classic blowups that I've had for a long time.

I put up the display while listening to General Conference. The first Saturday of October was just getting the corn stalks put up in the yard. The first Sunday was finally putting up the lights and the blowups. I had to make sure that I got the cords in the right places and that they were in working condition. I even had to make sure a few of the poles that were close to the driveway were a few feet away on the grass, just because people need room to get in and out of the cars.

There were even a few things that were added. Like a couple of these sun-sensor Halloween lights that I bought on Temu. For the last couple of weeks, the display has been a big hit on sunny days, but I still had to make sure I covered up some of the cords with plastic containers and duct tape, because we've had some heavy rain with hail. Like I've said before, we have a circuit breaker that was installed years before that is still prone to wet weather.

Now that a lot of things are covered and staked, we had our little pumpkin picking party and added some of them into the display after the grandkids picked theirs. I'm really looking forward to seeing trick-or-treaters coming through the corn maze. I'm also looking forward to another one of my Samy Kind books being published