Saturday, August 29, 2009

GRAPE-Enomics

Can someone please explain why grapes at walmart were 1.79 a pound but at Hannafords they were .99cents a pound? I figured out the following grape-enomics.

My 3 1/2 year old can eat about 2 pounds of grapes a week that averages out to be about 104 pounds a year. I think my yearly per pound average price would be about $2.00 since last winter they went up to 4.99 a pound. That is $208.00 dollars a year in grapes.. or with current grocery prices one shopping trip.
Doing this math at the store i quickly grabbed 6 pounds of grapes and froze them for the winter when the prices are so freaking high. I would much rather tyler snacks on grapes then chips due to economic conditions


In other news we are canning this weekend..so I will have more later on this weekend. Here are some quick garden photos!!!


The pheasants are getting very big!!

We have 3 big pumpkins that are starting to turn orange. We have several other pumpkins that were planted late due to the deer. hopefully they have time to turn orange.

My sunflowers are starting to bloom!
Looking forward to our first offical apple crop!!

On Wednesday we went to the utica zoo with grammy and aunt heather. Emma was actually awake for this trip and fed a goat!

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Aunt Laurie's 5 Page Rule

I am really behind on scrapping all the photos i want done. I had hoped to complete all the 2006 photos by the time emma arrived...yes 2006. That didnt happen. Aunt Laurie developed a five page rule. If I scrapped, I needed to do 5 pages! Well the last 2 Tuesdays I have scrapped with the girls but I have not meet my 5 page requirement.

Over the last week I have made up the difference and did 5 extra credit pages!...15pages in 2 weeks I am very proud!





Not sure if I will scrapbook tonight since at 2pm I am getting my wisdom tooth pulled.

Monday, August 24, 2009

Happy Birthday Grammy

LOOK WHO's 50!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Baby Town!

Welcome to Baby Town!!!
Around here they come in groups!! Below is little Emma with Baby Brayden! They are only 44 days apart!



As you can see, even the two big brothers, Tyler and Logan are close in age!! THEY ARE SO PROUD!!


It all started in 2005, when Brenda had Logan in March. Tyler arrived 8 months later in November with Little Jenna in May of 2006. Between Brenda, Stephanie and I; we have had 6 kids in 4 years.

For the second "batch" of kids!!! we went in reverse order!! Stephanie had Carter in November 2008, 2.5 years after Jenna. I followed up with Emma in July and Brenda had Brayden last week!

Logan, Tyler, Jenna, Carter, Emma, Brayden equals:

Love
Tenderness
Joy &
Compassion for
Each
Baby


Last night as we introduced Emma and Brayden we noticed how close in size their feet were. Despite the 44 day age difference they can stand toe to toe and heel to heel! (Emma Left, Brayden on the Right, with their mommies hands!)

It works out well, each group of boys are the same age to play, with one girl to make into a tomboy! But Jenna and Emma still have Diva time....before long we will be taking them to have a pedicure or tea day! I asked Emma what she thought about all the babies to play with.....

Need I say more?

Monday, August 17, 2009

Monkey business

Well last week i attempted my hand at live blogging. It didnt work out too well!! So i will quickly recap our trip!! On friday we went to Adirondack Animal land. It was alot of fun. We all loved it. The drive was a little long for tyler...
Ty: mom/dad are we at the zoo?
Us: no tyler we have more to go.
Ty: But that is going to take a while.

My personal favorite moment was when david show ty all the trucks at the truck stop. Tyler asked why they were there. David told him to rest and eat. Ty responded: Daddy trucks dont eat food.

Finally we made it to the zoo!! Tyler loved the animals. I give them major props for putting the playgrounds in. This park must of been designed by a mom. After so many animals there was a place for the parents to rest and the kids to play on a slide or climb something or go in a little house. It was perfect.

First about me!! I feed a monkey by hand..shocking right? okay now that i have done that i never need to do it again! But my favorite part was the bears. Look how cute they are!! they had a brown and black one! the brown one would sit and whine for you to give it food by the food pipe!

The bears are at the top of the hill. But threw the tunnel were the giraffes. At first tyler didnt see them but when he did omg was he happy and surprised!



We must of feed them a half a brick of crackers!!
As you can see Emma really enjoyed her trip to the zoo!


Here is a fast update on the pheasants. After one got out things have been going well. They are so big and hide really good in the grass. Its hard to get a photo of them. If you look carefully below you will see two of them.
We are hoping to go see baby brayden today. He is going to be so small compared to our little round lady bug!! She is so alert now. Ugh i dont want to go back to work in 3 weeks.

Friday, August 14, 2009

Brayden

how exciting emma and tyler new bff! brayden hull was born yesterday. he was 8 lbs 7 oz. we can now wait to meet him

Sunday, August 9, 2009

Early Harvest

We have been hard at work! Between having two kids, trying to keep the house clean, getting the dog healthy again, getting rid of the fleas and the garden...we have not really had a moment for us!

On Saturday we wanted to harvest our potatoes. We had planted both white and red rather early in the spring. They bloomed a few weeks ago and the tops died off so we knew they were ready.

We ended up with about a half bushel! The darn mice got some of my yummy red ones.
While we were out in the garden we did some additional harvesting and cleaning up. We pulled out dead plants..like our broccoli and lots of weeds.I pulled my Dill and Basil (tylers Basil - i still have my little ones) and hung them to dry. I can not wait to use my Ikea jars when they dry out. Our Bean crop has been harvested! We were able to get enough for another 3 dinners! We would had more but they too were part of the mice's feast.

We checked our Onions but they are not ready yet. Still kinda small!! We did get some cherry peppers already...i can not wait for riggies with them!!

Carrots were another success of 2009! These are just some of them! We have more in the garden still. Also Max has been feed some.....We needed an inspector!! I really likes the carrots tops. Crazy rabbit.

We ran, but we could not hide. We were bitten, bitten by the tomato blight. UGH..We were on track to get a great harvest. Take warning if you think you have it...clip the leaves fast. our plants were destroyed literally overnight.
We were going to pick the fruit that was not affected but decided to wait and see what happened. Well, they all had it a day later. We ripped them out and burned the plants. David is going to treat the soil and rest of the garden.

We did rip out a few cuke plants that were looking funky...since they next to the tomatoes we didnt want to risk it. We have never had such a great cuke crop. I the last few years we were lucky to get maybe 5 cukes, this year we have had over 30. On Friday we tried our hand at making pickles.We made Dill and Bread/Butter pickles. We were just going to start and make just the dill but we had cut so many that we went ahead and did the bread and butter. The problem was we didnt slice the B/B pickles so when they were hot they were very hard to get into the jars. I think next year, we will make them outside...omg did my house smell.

We ended up with Dill: 4 quart size jars and 6 pints; Bread and Butter: 6 Pints.

Since we have a great herb crop this year (another success story for 09!) I trying my hand at Herb Vinegars.
One is Basil and the other is rosemary. I should done the rosemary in white wine vinegar but we will see in 4-6 weeks how this tastes!

Thankfully our Zucchini crop slowed down. I may get caught up!! I baked some more bread this week. We made and jarred 7 pints of Zucchini relish. I will let you know how it is later in the week ....going to test it out at dinner!!

Last week i took the kids (by myself) to Fort Ricky. It was interesting!!! Tyler loved it and Emma slept. I have a lot of photos on webshots. But here some for you....Can you believe Emma is a month old already?

Look alike?

Everyone is talking about weather Emma and Tyler look alike. Look at these photos and you tell me!!


































Thursday, August 6, 2009

Vote for Emma


Vote for Emma!!

Please vote for Emma in the cutest baby contest!! The link is below!!

http://uticaod.upickem.net/engine/Votes.aspx?PageType=VOTING&contestid=8777

Above is the photo i submitted.

Saturday, August 1, 2009

Zucchini bread in the Summer

I have found the shortcut to making bread in the heat of summer!! This morning i mixed up one batch of zucchini bread. Since I had everything out I placed in ziploc bags all my dry ingredents for 4 more batches. Then as i shredded the zucchini i placed them into sm. ziploc bags measured to size.
These little kits are in the fridge..so when i am ready to bake i only need to add my oil, eggs and sugar.

Then since its hot and i didnt want to bake them in my oven i moved my roasting oven outside on the porch. And baked everything outside.
After baking they looked like this:

YUMMY!