Wrapping up October

Last week we carved our pumpkins. Chris made his into Voldemort, and I did a Lorax. It was a scrapped pumpkin as well as a cut, and it was my first time to do it that way versus simply cutting. Chris also did some shading and stuff. We had a lot of fun and did it just the two of us, with A already in bed one night.

A has also gotten really good about sitting up if placed. She can sit for a long long time. Here she is chewing on one of the orange bracelets we got for Kelly. She gnawed on it for quite a while that day. She also has taken to jumping. I mean this girl will jump and jump and jump and jump. At her age attention span is only supposed to be a matter of minutes, but I'm pretty sure that she could jump for hours and not be sick of it. She'll jump in her swing, she'll jump on her changing table, she'll jump if you hold her, you get the idea. She is still inch worming to things and still putting anything she can in her mouth. She's really getting good at the inch worming and able to get places quickly. She also has decided that our bed is her bed. We think she likes the pillows though, so we may try giving her a small pillow to curl up with and see what happens from that. When we place her in her crib she won't sleep, but will try and crawl around it. When we put her on our bed between two pillows she'll cuddle up to one and go to sleep. It makes it easy to travel that way I suppose.

One other new things that A has done, is drive! Just kidding. I often put her in a sling or backpack when we go places, but to prevent me from having to get the car seat out I typically do it from the driver's seat. She then sits in my lap occasionally. This week she started putting her hands on the steering wheel. She isn't trying to drive or anything, but it makes for a cute picture. It shows how her hands are growing (as is the rest of her).

We still haven't heard any news on job fronts, so we're just continuing to put out applications places. Hopefully we will hear back soon, at least for one of us.

The weather has finally started to cool down, we've had frost a couple of days now. No snow like they got in the northeast though :( I'm sure we'll get snow soon enough though. Hope all is well with you.

Pumpkins

  This weekend we went to a nearby pumpkin patch. Well, it was an Abbey that had pumpkins, a corn maze, a hay ride, etc. It was quite nice actually.  We had perfect fall weather, as you can see from the pictures below. The corn maze was entertaining and we had to try and get 8 different punches through the maze. A slept on Chris's back for most of the maze, but it was a lot of fun. After we did the corn maze we looked for carving pumpkins. We found some, but will have to do the actual carvings this week. We managed to get them home and hollowed out, but not carved. We were having friends over for games, so we went down that route over stressing about carving the pumpkins.  We also found a pumpkin to bake with, so hopefully it will turn out well. I want to make fresh pumpkin puree and found a stupid easy recipe for it.

First wagon ride. This was shortly before A decided to taste the pumpkins...

A family photo with our pick of the pumpkins

Linda holding a pumpkin that's a big as her!

Yesterday was a good seasonal day for us here. We started with pumpkin cinnamon rolls. They were a bit wet and I was concerned they wouldn't roll right, but after letting the dough dry in the air, they did okay! We made pumpkin ice cream (I melted the pumpkin puree in some cream early in the day, then let it cool before making into the ice cream and it worked quite well -- no pumpkin chunks or separation) for dessert. I also made a butternut squash soup for dinner. It was super easy actually so here's the recipe!

1 Leek
garlic
3 lbs butternut squash, peeled, seeded and diced
2 medium pears, peeled, cored, and diced
1 yucca root
1 qt chicken stock
3/4 C apple juice
4 good sized parsnips
olive oil

slightly brown the leek and garlic in olive oil. Then add the squash, pears, yucca, and liquids. Let the mixture boil, then reduce heat and simmer until everything is soft. While the soup is simmering, thinly slice the parsnips for parsnip chips as garnish. Brown the parsnips in olive oil to use as garnish on the soup. (I salted them since I wanted them to be kind of salty, like a chip!) After the soup has simmered, puree it and serve with the parsnip chips.

I modified the recipe, using pears for apples, and yucca root for potatoes. I imagine that if you wanted to make the soup with those things it would also be quite tasty.

Crawling, A Style

 These are some funny pictures of A trying to crawl this week. She is working on getting everything synchronized, and still does a lot of belly flops, but is able to get around if she wants to.We are definitely in trouble now. You can also see how she'd much rather work on walking than crawling, but is making due just fine.

Just Another Manic Monday

Well, this weekend was a ton of fun and Monday wasn't so manic for A and me as it was for Chris. This past weekend we managed to make it down to the MSI. We got to see the Dr. Seuss exhibit, and it was really really really cool. Did I mention it was cool? It was small, but jam packed with all sorts of good stuff in it. It had a great timeline, some of his unusual taxidermy, some of the stuff he did for the war office during WW2, some great magnetic boards to create rhymes, and really cool artwork that he did -- some of it well known, others out of his private stash that he did only at night, just for himself. One of the coolest things was the original pages from the Grinch that Seuss did. (Did you know he was 53 when he wrote the Grinch, and it is a parody of what he felt was increasing commercialism and forgetting the real meaning of Christmas?) For all of his books he would type them using a typewriter, and then place the words on the page as he wanted them. Then the drawings would go around the words. When he had them perfect he would send those pages to the publisher with specific color pallets. He did that same process for all of his books. So it was really cool to see the pictures, here is an illegal photo of one of them in fact. Yes, I thought it was cool enough to risk security guards confiscating my phone to get a photo.

After the MSI we went to Lincoln Park for the Pumpkins in the Park 5k. I ran it while Chris and A cheered me on in the windy fall weather. It was quite pretty, but the wind, oh the wind!

\One HUGE thing this past week has brought is a fairly mobile A. She isn't crawling, but she is definitely inch worming and able to get from point A to point B if she wants to. She often does, and it is fun watching her try and crawl. She likes to look into the cabinet that houses our dvd player, wii, etc. She also likes our boxes of games, but she wants to put all of it in her mouth. It is quite entertaining to see her move up to something with her mouth open and try to get something flat into it. I'll try uploading a video and see if I can get one to work here:

She really just wants to stand, so she pushes off with her feet more than her knees and hasn't really gotten the hands down yet.  She's good about rocking, so we're expecting some real movement sometime soon.

Philadelphia

 This past weekend (and for Columbus Day so our friends would have an extra day off) we went to New Jersey. We got to see Josh and Anna. :) We originally had planned to go to their wedding in July, but decided to go and see them instead. We are super glad that we did that to celebrate them getting married. As most pastors will tell you, a wedding is a day while a marriage lasts a lifetime.  While we were there we went to Philly for one day, and Princeton for another. We also managed to watch the OU/TX game at an Irish pub since the game started shortly after we arrived.

While in Philly we went to the Franklin Institute. It was pretty neat to see everything explained in relation to "Dr. Franklin" or how he would have done something. It was also cool to see some of his original designs of things. The Institute was housing the "Mummies of the World" exhibit. The exhibit was very cool since it had mummies from all over the world. We got to see mummies from South America, Asia, and Europe as well as a few from Egypt. The exhibit started by discussing the way mummification happens -- either intentionally or unintentionally. It then went on to describe how scientists are able to use modern techniques to un-invasively see what was under mummy wrappings. The exhibit also discussed using clues from the mummies to determine how the people lived and what their lives were like. The most interesting in this regard was a Hungarian family that had died of TB in the late 1700s. The mom, dad, and baby were all almost perfectly preserved from a drying mummification process. 

After we were done with the mummies we went through the Earth, Electricity, and Heart exhibits at the Franklin Institute. They have a HUGE walk through heart. You walk through the ventricles, lungs, aorta, etc. and it was neat to be "blood" for a few minutes.

After we were done with the Franklin Institute we walked to the Pennsylvania State House. There were groups of people demonstrating. While Anna thought hard about joining them, we really didn't get close enough to see what they were protesting. The state police had barricades around the building so we couldn't get super close. We did manage to play in a "park" of game pieces across the street from the state house. There were chess pieces, sorry pieces, monopoly pieces, etc.

As we rested our legs on the game pieces we continued our walking tour of Philly and went to the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall. There was a really long line for the bell, so we walked up behind the museum and got to see it that way. Independence Hall was also closed for renovations.

On Monday we walked around Princeton University and a square in town. Overall it was an interesting college, especially seeing as the buildings were older than the country.

Pasta and Fabyan VIlla

Pasta is something we like and would eat more of if it wasn't so expensive.  Because of this I've been experimenting with the pasta roller some.  I made some chickpea/rice/yuca pasta yesterday.  It turned out quite tasty and as always, making pasta is easy.

1 C Chickpea
1 C Yuca
1/2 C Rice
1/2 tsp salt
2 eggs
4 TBS olive oil
3 TBS water

Really only use the water until it is wet, like you would when making a pie crust.  The dough should stick to its self.  After you make it, roll it out with a rolling pin, rolling it as thin as possible.  Then you can cut it how you like, or use a roller and make it thinner.  You can make lasagne noodles by just letting it dry flat in the sizes that you'd like.  Or you can make strips out of it and it is linguine, or roll it a bit around something and then you'd get a manicotti shell.  Well, you get the idea. If using a roller of any form (I use the one attached to my mixer) smaller pieces are better than larger ones and may make it manageable for a single person to do the whole thing. The difficult thing for use is having a place for the pasta to dry.  It needs to be exposed to air until it dries.

When dry, put in a bag and refrigerate. Cook for about 5 min in boiling water like you would any other pasta.

In other news, yesterday (Sunday) we went exploring in the area.  There is a place nearby called the Fabyan Villa. It is a Wright designed house that is on a huge plot of land which was converted into a park.  There is also a japanese garden on the property, as well as an old windmill.  We went exploring there yesterday and it was quite a bit of fun.  The weather was perfect -- only needed a long sleeve shirt and pants to really be comfortable. We didn't get to tour the villa like we wanted, so we will go back for that sometime. Here are a few pictures from the day.  We were having some trouble setting the pictures which is why the one of me and A is washed out, but it is "artsy," not really a mistake, right?

In general A is really getting on the crawling bit.  She also really wants to eat food, but won't get that until she can sit up by herself and has a few teeth. She watches intently as anyone eats.  This morning she got mad at me when I took my breakfast plate into the kitchen to put away.  She also has a four point stance down pretty good, but prefers her elbows to her hands. She is definitely interested in moving and will roll over to get places if she wants.

Chris and I are continuing to put out applications so please pray for that. Nothing really new on any front, so we're holding steady and hoping to hear back from applications.

It looks like we've got a stellar week of weather ahead of us which almost makes up for all the rain we had last week.  Almost. We will be sure to get out and about because winter is coming and then we'll be stuck inside.