Last weekend, the Lawrenceville Main Street hosted "Scarecrow in the Village" where school age children make scarecrows. So I took Terran and Sisi there and we made our own. Well, actually, it was suppose to be Terran's scarecrow but I ended up doing most of the work. Sisi helped a little. Terran found his friend from school and started throwing hay all around. Other than the scarecrow, they also had pumpkin painting and mask making. It was a fun little event. Now, our scarecrow sits on a bench along 206 and we see her every time we drive by! Fun!
Our scarecrow wearing clothes that Sisi outgrew recently. I wanted the kids to sit next to the scarecrow for a photo op but they both refused. Terran was not helpful at all in building the scarecrow. He just ran off and started playing with hay. Sisi is working on her mask. And Terran is painting his pumpkin. Happy Fall!
My kids wait for autumn to come all year. They know what they want to be for Halloween for the following year as soon as this one is done. They dream about raking and they get excited by the thought of running through a huge pile of crunchy leaves. Now, the long awaited fall is HERE!
They start off by riding their bikes fast on the sidewalk towards their fresh pile. Terran rides his bike into the pile. He loves to fall into the soft and crunchy pile. Notice Pat with his laptop in the back. All covered in leaves.
It's the season of apples! yum! yum! My kids love them. And we have a huge orchard 5 minutes from our home. Isn't that grand! So last weekend, we went picking. It was near lunch time and we were all hungry so to make it quick, we just picked Fuji apples - one of my favorites! We picked some off the tree and ate it right there. Even though some of the apples were not completely red, they were so sweet and amazing!
So here are my kiddos beneath the apples:
Sisi peeking through the branches while picking her apples. Sisi and Terran each got a bunch of apples to take home and one for eating on the spot!
My house is nice and quiet on Saturday mornings. Patrick took Terran and Sisi to Hopewell YMCA for Terran's munchkin sports class. Aidan is sound asleep in his room. And I get to sit on my couch with a cup of coffee and enjoy this lovely time. So I think about food and what we can have for dinner....
Well, there's not much to think since I have my week's dinner planned out. I think we're going to have mushroom sage pasta tonight! I bought all the ingredients at the market except for sage. I really don't like to buy fresh herbs from the store because they don't seem to have a lot of flavor and they are super pricey. But lucky for me, we got a bunch of sage as part of the CSA this week! Our farm has really wonderful herbs and that sage has got to be great!
As for the mascarpone cheese, the pasta recipe calls for 8oz but I could only find a 16oz tub. So I have some to spare. I've been searching the web for what to do with the extra. My mind immediately go to desserts like tiramisu but I am on a diet right now and baking dessert is a BAD idea. So here are some options to add delicious cheese into non-dessert food: - Stir it into pasta for a creamy sauce - spread on a rustic bread along with jam or marmalade - mascarpone pancakes
I think I am going to make a run to the bakery down the street for some bread so I can spread some of that yumminess on it. And I think I am going to ask Patrick to make us some mascarpone pancakes instead of his usual banana pancakes tomorrow morning. Ohhhh yum!
I told myself about a month ago that I'd update this blog regularly. That's been difficult. I guess I should try harder anyway. With 3 growing kids, there's always something new and something exciting (sometimes just barely minimally exciting).
Well, the temperature has dropped and I can't say that I am liking it but it makes me happy that the season calls for more frequent use of my lovely crockpot. I didn't use it much during the summer because the food that comes out of the crockpot just isn't so appealing in heat.
So right now, my crockpot is on and cooking Hoppin' John - a stew like dish with black eye peas, sausages, chard, tomatoes etc. It took me all of 5 minutes to through everything in in the morning and we'll have something warm and hopefully wonderful at night.
Recipe is from one of my favorite website: crockpot365
Patrick usually takes Sisi to her ballet class. It starts from 6:15 and it's the worst time for us. Feeding the kids, grumpy baby, tired from a long day of screaming and yelling, the usual family stuff. But last night, Patrick said that I should really go see her dance. And he's right. I really wanted to. So I fed all the kids dinner at 4:30, and got Aidan ready so he can stay home with Pat and bathe while we are gone. It worked out well.
Sisi has a cute pink ballet outfit, white tights, and her tiny leather ballet shoes that she wears to her class. It's all girl and she loves it. Seeing her do her stretches in the beginning and then doing her plié made my heart swoon. She's so focused and I could tell she's loving it. It was just adorable and It made me so happy that I have my girly girl daughter to offset the two rambunctious boys.
Terran came with me so while we sat at the corner of the gym watching Sisi, he dutifully did his homework from Kindergarten. It's a packet of work to be completed in a week and had 7 pages which included drawing, handwriting without tears, figuring out patterns, coloring, and learning letters F and B. I think it's a lot for a kindergartner. So he worked hard on in and pretty much focused for the full 45minutes and got it done! Yay for T!
It's October now and the temperature dropped all of a sudden. I'm wearing a sweater today. And a skirt but I should really go put on some tights before I catch cold. Burrrr....
