Utah Visit

We went to Utah for one week this summer. R was supposed to have been in Europe, so I was planning on taking the boys myself, but he ended up getting done sooner, so he was able to join us. It was great fun. Only my parents had met A, and no one had seen F since he was two months old, so it was like meeting a whole bunch of new people.

Since I know no one wants to see all 200+ pictures, I've created a highlights album on Picassa. Check it out if you like.

It's Autumn-time, It's Autumn-time . . .

. . . the leaves are falling down.

It's Autumn-time, It's Autumn-time,

It's all around the town.

Well, autumn has finally arrived here, and with it come the joys of putting up what we have grown this year. I've been wicked busy freezing beans and tomatoes, canning tomatoes and apples, and prepping the yard for the winter and coming spring. My compost pile abounds with tomato skins and pulp, apple skins and cores, and the ends of beans. (And I still have tomatoes and beans on the vines.)

To celebrate, we went apple picking as a family. This time, since my dear husband was with us, we were more adventurous and strayed over huge portions of the orchard. We climbed the Empire tree to pick some apples, tasted Matsu for the first time, and filled two bags. With the three bags of Romes my mom brought from Utah, I've been busy.

Climbing trees

Me too

Searching for our apples

F-- picks

R-- and A-- pick

S-- picks

As we checked out the boys found a hay wagon to play on.

Galina

Some friends invited us to join them in Galina, Illinois for Labor Day weekend. Galina is in the three corners area (the corners of Illinois, Iowa, and Wisconsin) and is nothing like the parts of Illinois we regularly see. It is hilly and quite fun, I've heard, during the winter. (There are signs everywhere that proclaim "snowmobile crossing.") The first night we hit downtown Galina with a crowd of about a billion hungry people. As we walked down Main, looking for a place to eat, we were confronted with restaurant after restaurant with waiting times of well over 1 hour. Finally we found a fun little burger joint that had space, was roomy, had decent food, and kept the boys entertained.

On Labor Day, we went hiking in the Mines of Spain in Debuque, Iowa. The boys loved climbing down to the ground level. There was one moment of stress when S-- and the F-- pronounced that they needed to poop. (This was of course on the lowest level, the furthest from the outhouse.) My dear husband came to the rescue and taught the boys about wiping with leaves.

We recovered, cleaned off with hand sanitizer, and were sufficiently away from it when we were passed by a family on the return trip. (Such relief that no one was squatting in the trees.)

When we had crossed a train track, we were at the Great Mississippi. The older boys had a ball throwing rocks, pebbles, and small boulders into the water. We separated them a good distance to make sure that no one hit anyone else (though we still had our close calls).

Pictures

I know you've been waiting patiently, so today, instead of working my way through my to-do list, I have been uploading pictures, backing up pictures and computers, and putting some together for the blog. Since I am incredibly behind, I won't give full stories on everything (if you want to know the background, just ask). And so without further ado . . .

New furniture . . . which produces

Crawling through the sides. All the boys have done this.

Happy Birthday, S--. He's 5. The theme was camping. We set up the tent in the backyard and played games like find the bug, tape the fish on the fish hook, mosquito bite tag. It was fun.

Variation on three boys pictures

I owe you a picture (or two) . . .

And I promise they will really come. I just haven't downloaded anything in a while. But since I am all about the power of language, I will describe some pictures and then let you visualize what the picture shows.

#1: S-- and F-- sitting on the piano bench belting out "Bob the builder" as they "play" it on the new (to us) piano. A-- is crawling under their feet.

#2: The older boys throwing rocks into the great Mississippi River.

#3: All three boys sitting against the wall in their new school clothes. S-- and F-- got matching shirts and pants from Target. A-- just got the shirt.

#4: The first day of preschool for S--. He loves it.

#5: Visits to Utah and all the family there.

#6: Our new floor (installed last week). The color of most walls is a nice yellow. The other wall is a blue. The couches are espresso leather.

Death without rebirth

Our computer died. It was accompanied in death by a modem, a router, and perhaps a monitor. It was killed by some sort of lightning/power surge.

We are in mourning. We didn't lose anything except the convenience of uploading pictures and such. Pictures will come back. I'm not sure when.

Look ma, two wheels!

Today we took the training wheel's off S--'s bike. His training wheels were seriously crooked and broken, probably because he would mount his bike by standing on the training wheels. But because of that crooked brokenness, it was easy to see that he wasn't riding on them very often. So we pulled them off. He took off right away, but wobbled a little and, after collapsing on the grass in absolute despair, he demanded that we put the training wheels back on. When we said, "No" (after all, he rode halfway across the lawn before he wobbled), he wept and cried out, "I hate my bike."\

My patient husband talked him through it--"but you rode." We filled up his tires, which were a little low, and got him to agree to try again. He rode all the way across the lawn. And then needed to show his best friend what he could do.

It was at this point that my husband heard him whisper, "I love my bike."