Big Girls

I left town on Sunday to go to a conference in Portland (wet!).  Glenn had the kids in Lewiston Sunday afternoon.  They went to the Home Depot..........

They will likely hate that I'm putting this on my blog....  But, in my family if you do something silly or amusing and it gets caught on camera, you can pretty well bank on it going on the blog!!  I LOVE this picture!  These are my little girls.....  Who used to love riding in these sorts of carts.  (And sitting in my lap, and holding my hand....)  Looking at this picture makes me smile, but it also makes me sad for the part of the childhood that's gone and will never be the same.  They're amazing, beautiful, intelligent, compassionate girls.  But they're not (really) small enough to ride in a cart, or sit in my lap.  Sniff.

They're so funny.  And I'm so glad Glenn got this picture.  And they let him take it knowing it might be put on their mom's blog against their will!

Lightning

A few weeks ago we had a lightning show and I had a moment of inspiration and drug out  my dad's old tripod.  

Many, many moons ago (before children!), I managed to capture this amazing lightning shot with my old SLR film camera.  I've never really tried to capture lightning since then, but I decided to give it a shot.

I couldn't figure out why the first several pictures were so dark.  Turns out my lens cap was still on.  Ugh! And I missed a few good lightning shots in the meantime!

There were an awful lot of shots without lightning in them.

And it's hard to know exactly where to point your camera to capture the shot.

This is the only shot of lightning I succeeded in getting.  It's okay, but not terribly inspiring.  Now I know why I haven't taken any more lightning pictures over the past 15 years!

So I decided to take a shot of the moon.  I started out leaving the shutter open for quite a long time.  I was surprised that the shot came out looking more like daylight than dark.

This one's better, but I still have some work to do if I want to master moon pictures!

Photo Assignment

I'm taking a brief photography class in nearby Grangeville right now.  Last week the instructor talked all about how cameras work, light, composition, etc.  It was a great refresher.  Tonight we have the follow up class where we will take a few pictures and look at our work from this week.  Our assignment was to take pictures using our new knowledge.  We had a list of 20 words and we were supposed to take pictures to represent those words.  Here are a few of my favorites.

Childhood.

Death.  (Keuterville Cemetery) 

Emotion.  (I had been trying to take a picture of Morgan and Zoey, and Morgan's smile looked very forced.  I told him to stopped looking so constipated, and this is the look I got.  I  love it!)

Energy.

Fresh.

Life.  (Holy Cross Catholic Church, Keuterville)

Sound. (This was at the homecoming football game in Cottonwood last week.  This is the band teacher playing along with the band prior to the game.)

Humanity.  (There was a parade prior to the homecoming game and the kids marched in it.  Ellea offered to give this little girl a piggy back ride because someone else was giving the girl's sister a piggy back.)

Happiness.  (Need I say more?  Does that girl not look incredibly happy?  Heck, even the horse looks pretty content with life!)

History.  (This is an old truck from the Poxleitner Sawmill days.)

 Home.  (This is the first home that Glenn's parents lived in after they were married.)

I loved having a reason to go out and use my camera to take artistic photos.  I loved having to use the manual settings on my camera and put some thought into the lighting and composition.  I'm sad the class will be over after tonight, but I'm determined to keep stretching and improving my skills and abilities.

Little Old Man

Another dress up day last week was "old person day."  Morgan was determined to do something for it.  Something more than just using his pig cane. (yes we cleaned it!)

He talked his dad into taking the lenses out of an old pair of his glasses.  And we stuffed a pillow case and made a "hunch" on his shoulders.

I don't know what this face is about.  Cranky old man, maybe?

Mismatch

Last week was homecoming week around these parts and the elementary school got to have a "dress up days" during the week.  My favorite was "Mismatched day."  Morgan's interpretation of this day required some creative thinking!

We took an old pair of jeans with holes (and barely fitting) and cut off one leg (leaving the waistband intact).  He wore those over a newer pair of jeans.  Not terribly comfortable, I don't imagine, but he was satisfied.  I did note that the extra jeans came off immediately after he got home that night with a sigh of relief, but he made it through the day!

 We did the same with a freebie t-shirt that he never wore, and he wore two different shoes.  We made his hair spiky on one half of his head and flat on the other half.  He also wanted me to paint half his face, but the bus was due to pick him up for school, so we went with a black line under the eye like football players wear.

And there you have it.  One mismatched little boy!

Peaches

There is a little fruit orchard not far from here that I knew was selling pick-you-own-peaches this year.  I saw on facebook that they were getting towards the end of the season and wanted to go check it out.  My family wasn't too crazy about the idea, so I called my mama.  She was only too happy to go along.  Gotta love moms for that - going along when no one else wants to!

The trees were pretty well picked over and I was a little disappointed by our haul.  Until we weighed it in....  In 45 minutes, we picked over 100 pounds of peaches!  I was so proud of us!

I was blown away by just how yummy a peach can be when it's picked off the tree when it's ripe.  Wow!  I've had tree-ripened peaches before, but I guess I forgot how doggone fabulous they are!

So there I was with 100 pounds of ripe peaches.  The pride faded and the work began!  Mom picked me up a little food dehydrator and so I gave dried peaches a go.  I think they're yummy.  Most of my family doesn't agree, but that leaves more for me to enjoy during the dreadful winter months!

And I decided to make some peach freezer jam, too.  Aren't peaches just beautiful?

A little cooking, a little mashing, some sugar and away we go.

I discovered this product a few years ago at a health food store.  I like it because it doesn't call for as much sugar as traditional pectin does.  Do you know how much sugar goes into jam?  It's like you're making candy rather than fruit spread!

The majority of the fruit became puree for peach leather.  I grew up eating fruit leather which is like fruit roll-ups, only 100x better and better for you, to boot!  One of the few "health kicks" my mother had that I enjoyed!  Tofu hot dogs?  Not so much!

My kids and I LOVE peach leather.  If you've never had such a thing, you're missing out.  And it's relatively easy, compared to some forms of preserving fruit.  You simply wash the fruit, cut it into quarters and cook it in a tiny amount of water for 20-30 minutes.  Then you puree it in a blender with a little bit of honey.  I freeze the puree and sometime over the next few months, my dear mother will take the puree to her house and pour it out on the trays of her huge food dehydrator (the size of a small refrigerator!) that she still has from her health nut days!  Yeah for mothers!  You can also dry the puree in an oven or even a sunny window, but I've never tried it.

After working up almost 100 pounds of peaches, I sure was grateful that those peach trees weren't more loaded down with fruit.  Who knows how many pounds I would have come home with!

Cowboy Hat

"Hey, Quattro!  Wanna wear my hat?"

"Umm,  okay....."

"How do I look?"

"Okay.  That was hilarious.  Could you could take this thing off my ear now?"

Trail Challenge

Part of our horsie weekend involved a trail challenge that Nicole and Candi participated in.  I didn't because my horse is fabulous out on a "real" trail, but is a bit of a chicken about the scary fake obstacles people put together for trail classes.

Most the horses were fine with walking through the "brush."

Very few horses were willing to walk through the water which was a tarp in a shallow pit with water in it.  Horses have terrible depth perception, so this looked suspicious to them.  Jasper politely refused!  Nicole came away with third place for her age group.

The rope gate is harder than it looks.

This was just a bunch of loose straw with some pop cans scattered in it, but many horses were a little suspicious.  A few horses snagged a bite on their way through!  Funny how it can be scary and tasty all at once!

Hot Horse Show

Another fun horsie-weekend with our dear friend, Candi.

Her little filly, "Sis," did great and was a patient girl waiting around all day for the festivities to wrap up.  Boy, was it a hot, long day.  But we had a lot of fun with our four-legged friends.  I even took my old horse, but you won't see any pictures of us, I'm afraid.  You'll just have to take my word for it!

Nicole and Jasper had some tough competition, but they held their own.

It had been a couple weeks since she'd ridden him and over a month since they'd done English together, but  they looked good.

Even came away with a few Championship ribbons which always puts a smile on that girl's face!

At the Park

A trip to Lewiston to hang-out with cousins wouldn't be complete without a trip to the park.

We all enjoy some good swing time.

And slides are fun.

 And no playground is complete without a good ole' steering wheel!

Library

One favorite activity in Lewiston for some of our favorite little people is the brand new downtown library.  So we went twice in three days, although our attention span wasn't always very long!

Sometimes something as simple as pushing a stool around is pretty entertaining.

A few minutes of a computer game is fun, too.

There was even a craft station set up where we decorated paper plates to make into hats.

Fun times at the Lewiston Library!