Photo Dump

What have we been up to....

Juicing grapes. We got 25 beautiful quarts from our grapes.

I brought some concord grapes home several weeks later and in the process of juicing them, the pot overflowed and created a burnt mess on the stove. Unfortunately, the smoke "smell" leached into the beautiful purple juice and likely ruined all 15 quarts. There's no amount of anything that can cover the burnt flavor!

A random chain of events landed our little piece of the world in the middle of a photo shoot. We had 6-8 photographers, editors, and story writers on the property along with two super sweet Asian children and their parents for like 3 hours one afternoon in September. The photos were for a children's book about a day at the farm. The crew was at our neighbor's with cows and bees before our house. They rounded off the photo shoot with our chickens, sheep, dog, picking beans/grapes/apples and the red barn. I am pretty sure we will get a copy of the book. The children held up amazingly well for being told where and what to do for over 4 hours. And I laughed as most of the group showed up in straw hats, trying to look the part of country folk.

We made it up to High Valley on multiple weekends - to work on the driveway, to admire the driveway, and play by the shriveled up lake. There was not a lot of water but tons of sticky mud and cat tails! The kids had a blast making snow in the fall. Poor Darwin really wanted to be with Chadwick and the others in the canoe. He swam out to about the middle of the lake before I could get him to come back to shore. While he was paddling back to me, I asked myself if I would be willing to jump into the frigid, dirty water to save my poor, sputtering dog....luckily, he made it back without incident and I didn't have to answer.

The school carnival - hosted each year as a fundraiser, the carnival was a huge hit! Games, food trucks, and a silent auction completed the night. My kiddos were such troopers as we were there early to help set up and late to take down. We met Kenzie and her girls which added to the fun of it all. The weather was perfect and not too hot as it's been in years past. The event went smoothly and everyone seemed to have a good time. Mallorie got to try a pizza in a cone...to which she gave a thumbs up on taste. I volunteered my artistic husband to create the backdrop for the photo booth (castle/knight theme) and he went all-out. Using dot markers, he colored the dragon and castle on the garage floor. Turns out, dot markers bleed through fabric and we were left with a dragon and castle on the concrete for about a month. It was a nice welcome as we parked the car each day!

October brought cooler temperatures, general conference (What?? Two hour church rumors were real!), fallen leaves, and canning applesauce (we purchased apples from the Caldwell orchard again this year. Mallorie cried the whole way there and back because her ear was hurting, poor thing.)

A beautiful weekend camping in the Sawtooths and a cabin trip to McCall rounded out the first and last weekends of my birthday month, but those will need to be separate entries to keep this one from turning into a full-blown novel. =)