Jumping Daisy

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Notice how the big kids are a bit blurry?  Leila and Sawyer were very excited…Leila about the candy, Sawyer about the horse (made by Papa Carey!)
Papa Carey, Aunt Cassie and Cory took Leila and Sawyer around trick or treating while Thea helped mom and I hand out candy.  Fun was had by all! 

>She is crawling for real now, on hands and knees, and she recently was able to pull herself up to stand at the couch. She will be cruising in no time, but so far she just pulls herself up and looks at you with this look of glee and accomplishment.
This one:

>I grew up on a farm in Southwest Iowa, and we moved across the state and into town living the summer before I turned 13. My life now is so differently, and the childhood experiences that my kids are getting is so different than how things were for me. I am so engrossed in their lives and building experiences for them, that I rarely spend much time thinking about my own experiences. I am so far removed from my time on the farm, but luckily I have a good memory. I can still see my way around the farm and outbuildings in my mind and remember the great adventures that Andrea and I had, starting as soon as we stepped outside of our back door. We didn’t have a lot of money when I was kid, I know that now, but at the time I often felt like I had the whole world to myself out on our farm. We had our own play house, a really house (who cares if it was meant for chickens?) with windows and a roof and a door, complete with a homemade wooden play kitchen (awesome!). How many kids can say that? There were so many places to explore and I remember my sister and I creating elaborate pretend games. I hope that my kids will have lots of fun pretending and exploring, but it just isn’t the same when you live on a quarter acre lot in the burbs with only a 40’x 70′ fenced in back yard to call your playground. My kids have a lot of crap, but they don’t have the wide open space and outbuildings filled with potential imaginary worlds that I had. But alas, we are a suburban family. The upside? We have some amazing friends who we love to hang out with, who have kids close in age to our kids, and who are giving their kids the kind of childhood that I had, and they had too, as they are both grown up farm kids. This past weekend we spent the day at the Weber farm in Mechanicsville and we had a really great time. I can tell you that this farm visit beats the heck out of any pumpkin farm I have ever seen! 🙂
We had lunch, steaks on the grill. Of course they didn’t come from Hy Vee, but were home grown and delicious! The weather was perfect even though the grown was kind of wet so we took the kids out to play. Bryce will be 4 in just a couple of weeks and he is such a proud farm boy! He LOVED showing us around. The kids started off by picking up fallen apples out of the back yard and filling their wagons so we could feed them to the cows. It was at this point that we realized that we had left our camera inside and that such cuteness was going on with Bryce, Eli (just turned 2) and Leila, that we would have to run in for it. Let me take you on the photo tour, led by Bryce:

Come on guys, lets pick some corn!

We better load up this corn for the cows…

Leila, check out my truck!

That’s a long way up there…I think I’ll stay on the ground!

Time to feed the cows!

What a nice cow!

Chores are done!

Leila ran through mud puddles, and fed cows. climbed on tractors and had a generally great time getting dirty. Good thing I had extra pants in the car!

It was right about now that we started talking about going home, and Leila started to get upset. Her response was, “but Bryce is my very best friend!” It was about the cutest thing I had ever seen. Bryce was busy feeding cows so Leila walked up to him and said, “Thank you Bryce, I had so much fun with you.” He responded by reaching over and pulling Leila into a hug. Cory and I were talking on the way home about how happy we are that we had kids when Matt and Cindy were having kids. This friendship is so adorable. Who knows what the future may hold, but I hope they always get along. It will be interesting, but I am sure that they will grow up with lots of contact with one another. Matt and Cindy are great friends of ours and rank right up there with the “real” aunts and uncles, so it is inevitable. It sure looks to me like Bryce and Leila are great friends too.

Before we can go we have to have one last picture, Bryce wanted everyone in it, but of course we had to have a photographer so Cory isn’t pictured.

>We attended a Halloween party last weekend. I am normally really not into Halloween, but we agreed that Leila would really get a kick out of the whole family dressing up, so we did. I have never actually seen Sleeping Beauty, but since that was Leila’s costume, I did some google investigating and made myself into a fairy godmother Character to coordinate with her.

Cory and Thea also coordinated as a bee and bee keeper. Very cute stuff here!

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An incredible season underway…This really makes me wish I had a lot of extra money sitting around for a bowl trip this year! Go Hawks!

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I do not like pumpkin in any form, that includes jack o’ lantern and pie. But I have been craving pumpkin bars, and no I am NOT pregnant.

I bought canned pumpkin for the first time and Leila and I cracked into it this morning during Thea’s nap time. Leila thinks it smells like carrots.

I scoured the internet for a pumpkin bars recipe before I came to my senses and broke open the trusty Anderson Family Cook Book. I like cookbooks, I like cooking, and I love family. So I consider it an extra treat to use a recipe of someone I know and love, like my family. Or the Pioneer Woman.
 

I located a pumpkin bar recipe, submitted by Aunt Sheila! Bonus. So Leila and I made Aunt Sheila’s pumpkin bars, and they are currently cooling on the oven. I measured, Leila dumped and we shared the stirring duties…a great “Mommy day” activity!  Yum. ..the cream cheese frosting is still to come!

The picture is not my specific pumpkin bars, but I am sure that once frosted, mine will look at least as good.

For those of you who don’t have access to the Anderson Family Cookbook,  here is the recipe:

4 eggs
2 cups sugar
1 cup oil (or substitute apple sauce!)
1- 15 oz can of pumpkin
Mix these ingredients and then add the below mixture:

2 cups flour
1/2 tsp. salt
2 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. ground cloves
2 tsp. baking soda
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. ginger
1/2 tsp. nutmeg

Mix well and pour into greased and flours 12x18x1 pan.  Bake at 350 for 25-30 minutes.

Frosting:
6 oz. cream cheese
1 T. milk
4 cups powdered sugar
3/4 stick butter
1 tsp. vanilla

>Wednesday was a pretty day, and this time of year, you never know if it will be the last day until spring that we can go out and play without jackets, so we took advantage. Thea took her first swing, and loved it. Zoey got some love and attention, and Leila got to burn off some energy.

>I love it. Probably more than you do. Whining to follow…

I am a person that could sleep 12 hours every night if it was feasible. Before Thea was born, I was looking at 9 or 10 a night. From 9:00 PM, straight on through to 6 or 7. We had a two month stretch back in June and July where Thea obliged my need for sleep, and slept right on through with me. That time has long since passed, and I am now going on month 4 of no more than 3 or, if I am really lucky 4 hours of continuous sleep. I love my baby, even at 2 in the morning, but the lack of sleep is starting to make me a little bit crazy.
I can’t concentrate on anything and I have been some kind of sicky feeling everyday for probably a month. The other day, laying in my bed staring at the dust on my ceiling fan I found myself feeling irrationally angry at the clutter and dirt in my life and at the impending cold weather that I dread so much. I am not very nice to my children or my husband. I don’t feel very nice about anyone, but I probably try a little harder in the general public to be nice. I am tired of feeling responsible for so much, and I wish I was a better mother, a better worker, a better wife, a better friend, a better housekeeper. Working towards all of that seems so overwhelming. I would like to think that a few nights of regular sleep, and maybe a visit from a cleaning lady would cure what ails me. For now, I am blaming it on sleep and I will continue to tread water.

>This is a song that I am really liking these days…two of my favorite artists teaming up is always a good thing, and the fact that they are from two different genre’s makes that even more surprising.

This happens to also be my personal focus lately, being thankful for my life, my health and my family.

>So several people have mentioned to me that they can’t comment on my blog. I had it set up in a way that you had to be signed into a google account to leave comments. The reason I did this was that I didn’t want to deal with Spam, but because I also really like comments, I turned off that feature so now anyone should be able to comment as long as they pass the word verification. Your welcome, now comment for me! 🙂