A Visit From the Browns

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh! Nice picture.
Silly Faces.
Very serious faces (except for Dave).
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh. Again, nice picture.
Very silly faces!

Signs of Fall

Talking to Obadiah . . .

It was suggested to me, by our local preschool teacher, to video tape Obie talking so that we can observe his speech patterns. The big challenge was getting him to actually talk. He doesn't talk and when he does it is quite limited. I trust, however, that he will talk at some point and that his vocabulary will surpass my own. But in the meantime these clips of him are fun to watch. Enjoy!

Alex, the Monarch Butterfly

Elisabeth found a monarch caterpillar, up on McKinley road, while helping the Elliott's mend fence. She brought it home, along with some milkweed, and made this home for him.
Within a few days, Alex made himself a cocoon. After a week he came out and was a beautiful butterfly. Lucy & Joel were home when it happened and saw the entire process.
We released him back into the wild . . . goodbye Alex!

Hard at Work!

We started making apple sauce last night. It officially smells like fall now.
The plan is to make more this evening. The red jars are salsa and the green jars are hot pepper jam.
Pears and pear jam.
Today we have applebutter cooking in the crock-pot.
This is my wonderful mixer that has worked extremely hard for me this year . . . the attachments that we bought this year have been our wisest purchases yet.

Grace shucking beans on the back deck.
Apples waiting to be processed. In case you are wondering, everything that we have canned this year has come from our garden except the fruit. The apples and pears were collected from friends who have trees in their yard. We went over yesterday, after the winds from Ike came through, and collected all their drops.
Clean jars waiting to be filled.
Pickled beets! We are doing these right now and it smells so good in here as a result.

What goes in must come out . . .

Obadiah wearing his big boy underpants! He insists on going to the potty completely in the nude.
We are busy here putting up food for the winter and I am beginning to feel like a squirrel. In the midst of our harvesting, Obadiah has decided to potty train. At first I resisted but now I am committed. He is doing quite well and I am pleasantly surprised.

The Oriental Tates will be in Augusta, Georgia from October 1st to the 8th!