Date!

Zach and I went to a movie today! In a theater! By ourselves! Pardon my excitement, but it had been two years since we did that. Our babysitting funds tend to get spent when we go to Care Group (church small group) or to IUP Women's Club functions. Not much left for enjoying ourselves alone. But today we got a free afternoon courtesy of Austin's doting grandparents, who were only too happy to have him to themselves! And it was wonderful. Lunch at P.F. Chang's (so yummy; don't have one of those in Indiana, PA) and then The Blind Side in a real, non-drive-in theater. So nice!

Home for the Holidays

I met a man who lived in Tennessee and he was headed for
Pennsylvania and some homemade pumpkin pie.
From Pennsylvania folks are travelin' down
to Dixie's sunny shores.
From Atlantic to Pacific, gee the traffic is terrific.

Oh there's no place like home for the holidays.
For no matter how far away you roam,
If you want to be happy in a million ways
For the holidays you can't beat home sweet home.

These classic lyrics by the Carpenters (written from memory, excuse any mistakes) have been on my mind a lot this week because we "traveled down" from Pennsylvania to visit our family in Texas. It is home sweet home indeed and we are so glad to be here. Dixie's sunny shores it is NOT, though. Although it was sunny and warm yesterday for the first day of our visit, today turned cold. Would you believe we are going to have a White Christmas in Texas?

NOT the Collins Family Christmas Picture

It is hard to take a family picture with a one year old, you know?

Mmm...chocolate chips make for quick smiles.

We tried to get a smile with food.

Thanks, Ashley, for all the cute pictures!

A Not-So-Fun First

Austin threw up in public for the first time today. We were at the library, storytime had just finished, he had asked to be picked up so I was holding him and looking at a shelf of books. Seemed like a perfectly normal morning. Then cough, cough...yuck. Did I mention he had blueberries for breakfast? There will probably be purple stains on the library carpet forever to remind me of this morning. Did I also mention that we walked to the library today, so we got to walk home smelling a little pungent? Thank goodness Austin and I were both wearing layers so we could take off the worst parts of our clothing, which we carried home in a plastic bag provided by our totally wonderful children's librarian JoAnn.

This happens to every mom at some point, right?

Smiles

Austin is quite a smiley kid but it is pretty hard to get a smiley picture. Here are a few successes from this week.

Visiting Gran and Pops

Austin and I headed down to Texas last week to visit his Gran and Pops. As you can imagine Austin had a GREAT time! Gran and Pops quickly became his two favorite people--Austin ran to meet my FIL at the door every night when he came home from work just like he meets Zach at home, and he cried if my MIL so much as left the room he was in.

Gran and Pops picked out his Halloween costume and took him trick-or-treating.

Austin got to try a Three Musketeers. (By the way, how is it that a toddler instinctively knows that a lumpy, brown unfamiliar food is good and snatches it up but turns up his nose at an unfamiliar green vegetable?)

Pops built an awesome house for Austin to play in.

The weather was beautiful and we spent lots of time outdoors.

Bill and Becky's neighbors have some ducks and Austin liked to watch them. We fed them one day. I don't think Austin really "got it" but he liked throwing bread through the fence.


Austin has become a climber. Doesn't he look awfully pleased with himself to be up there?

Weekend Project

Last Thursday I went to a jewelry-making Girls Night Out, even though I hardly ever wear jewelry. Before I left I remarked to Zach that I might wear it more often if I had someplace to keep it that was visible and accessible, instead of stuck at the bottom of my closet in a bunch of different little boxes.

The next day, inspiration struck. I've had this bulletin board for practically all my life, push pins are easy to come by...and voila.

So far at least, my reasoning is working out: I wore a necklace today. Austin was fascinated. Note to self: no delicate chains for the foreseeable future.

Comparison

The first picture is August 2008; the second is now. Wow! My baby is not a baby anymore.

Just a Few Pictures

I love this age! It is so fun to watch him figure out his world day by day.

Visit from Grandma

Austin had a visit from Grandma Susan recently. She quickly made it to the top of his list of favorite people--she let him play on her bed, climb on the couch, and other normally off-limits activities. :-)

Austin loves books and asks to be read to many times a day.

Grandma brought this hooded towel. Austin loves to run around the house wearing it like a little froggy superhero.

We went apple picking while Grandma was here. (Leading to the applesauce making mentioned in my last post.) Austin liked putting apples in the buckets. I don't think he has made the connection between the whole fruit and the apple bits he eats at home--he didn't try to take a single bite out of the apples. It was a beautiful day and we had a great time wandering around the orchard.

What Would I Do Without Google?

Let's just say it was 10:00 at night, you'd spent ALL DAY in the kitchen making and canning applesauce, and you had a pan with scorched applesauce on the bottom. And you'd really like to kick back and relax, only this yucky pan was staring you in the face. Did you know that a little bit of baking soda and water in the pan, boiled for a few minutes, makes the stuff come right off? Thank you, Google!

Practicing to be Mr. Universe???

Sometimes dinner seems more like a training session...

Weekend Project

After reading about it, talking to friends about it, pondering it, and even taking a (mostly worthless) class, I finally jumped into the world of canning. Over the past year and a half I have become more and more convinced of the merits of eating locally, so preserving some of the summer harvest for myself seemed like a natural step in that direction.

So Friday morning Austin and I drove out to Yarnick's (one of our local farms) and bought a half bushel of tomatoes and a half bushel of Italian sweet peppers, plus some onions and jalapenos. Austin conveniently took a three hour nap (I asked Zach to pray specifically for that), the entirety of which I spent in the kitchen. And when he woke up, simple vegetables had been transformed into beautiful, tasty salsa.

Canning is kind of addictive, as it turns out. I keep grabbing my Ball Blue Book and looking for more things I can make. So many possibilities!

Mommy's Helper

This morning after breakfast Austin and I went upstairs to brush our teeth and do morning chores like making the bed. I was doing this and that in my room and noticed that he was going back and forth between my room and his. You know what he was doing?

Carrying diapers from the basket in my room into his room and putting them in the drawer! (I think there are a few on the floor because the drawer got full.) The correct drawer, no less, even though it is hardest for him to reach. I love it!

At Least One of Us Has No Reason to Feel Guilty

After church this morning Zach suggested we go out to lunch. Given that it was basically naptime, we knew we had to choose someplace quick and casual. We settled on Wendy's. (It just reopened this week due to a fire last summer, so it is currently the place to go in Indiana.) This is not really like us, you know. Going to eat fast food, I mean. We could probably count the number of times we eat fast food per year on one hand. We are more into slow food, organic food, local food...

But anyway, we went, ignoring any feelings of guilt. Zach ordered their new Asian Sweet and Spicy Boneless wings (which we highly recommend, by the way) and a baked potato, I ordered chicken nuggets and mandarin oranges; we also ended up with a small fries due to a Wendy's mistake. We figured we would just share our stuff with Austin. Did he want Daddy's wings? No. Did he want Mommy's chicken nuggets? No. Did he want french fries? Maybe a few bites. Did he want mandarin oranges? Yes. He ate the whole bowl while Zach was getting our drinks!

Kind of makes you feel good, you know? You must be doing something right when you take your kid to Wendy's and all he wants to eat is mandarin oranges.

Bible Story

Every night at bedtime we read a Bible story with Austin and pray with him. Here's how it went tonight, with a picture to help set the scene.

Daddy: This is a man whose name

Austin: (pointing) Daw! (dog)

Daddy: is Isaiah. God

Austin: Daw!

Daddy: sent him to tell the people

Austin: Daw! Daw!

Daddy: what they should do. He is called a

Austin: Daw!

Daddy: prophet. Can you say "prophet"?

Austin: Daw!

Daddy: The people are bad and God sends him to tell

Austin: Daw!

Daddy: them to stop being bad. He says that

Austin: Daw!

Daddy: if they don't, God will hurt their country, and wreck their cities, and burn up their houses.

Austin: (laughs)

Daddy: God is sorry when His people sin and

Austin: (laughs)

Daddy: do wrong things. God sends Isaiah to help them stop doing what is bad.

Goodness, I love this little boy!

Pictures I Should Have Posted Already

Sorry, Mom and Becky, I know I haven't been posting pictures of Austin nearly often enough for you. Here's some cuteness from July that I just never got around to posting before. Most of these are from the Collins' visit a few weeks ago.

I think this is cute; they're watching SportsCenter together.

Austin vs. Eeyore

Lazy Summer Days

Can it really be nearing the end of July? Summer, as it always does, has been flying by way too fast. We have not been doing too much around here, just enjoying all the time with Zach that summer brings. Here are some snippets of what we've been up to.

• Our worms are doing great! Most of them are much bigger than when we got them, and the bottom of the bin is filling up with castings. We are contemplating starting a second, larger bin when they start to reproduce.
• I discovered a nifty recipe for "Artisan Bread in Five Minutes." It comes from a book by the same name, actually, but I found the basic recipe online. (I am pretty sure they put it out there for free to convince you to buy the book.) Somewhat to my surprise, you actually end up with really tasty bread in about five minutes a day. No kneading, just mix up the dough, let it sit in the fridge, then bake. I haven't bought a loaf of bread in several weeks. It is cheap and healthy--no high fructose corn syrup hidden in this stuff! Check out the recipe here if you like.
• I have also found some awesome recipes for granola bars and "health-nut muffins." You can probably tell that I'm really trying to find alternatives to processed foods. I don't like looking at ingredient labels and seeing a bunch of weird chemicals that I've never heard of. But I still want to eat yummy stuff.
• I have been able to do a lot of reading this summer. Admittedly, a lot of my book choices have been pretty light, with little to no literary value, just for fun. But I have read a few more serious things. For fiction, I highly recommend The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. Don't let the somewhat funny name throw you off--the book is warm, humorous, and touching, and will actually teach you something about WWII history as well. As far as nonfiction goes, I just finished The Shaping of a Christian Family by Elisabeth Elliot. Very convicting and inspiring. I feel like I gained much more vision of what I would like my home and family to become for God's glory.
• Austin went to the doctor last Friday and weighs 24 pounds and is 32 inches tall. He has also officially said his first word: "duck." Or as it sounds when he says it, "duh!" He doesn't say mama or dada consistently at all but he knows what a duck is. Hmm.

I know this was kind of a random list but it will have to do for now. Perhaps I will motivate myself to post some pictures in the next few days.

Our New Pe(s)ts

One normally doesn't think that sharing your home with 500 or so worms is a good idea, right? But that is just what we are doing. After reading my sister's recent post about her plans to start vermicomposting, we decided to do a bit ourselves. The idea is pretty simple: a bunch of worms live in a bin and eat your vegetable scraps and paper. No need to find a place for a compost bin outside or worry about stirring it. Just let the worms do their thing and in a few months you will have some worm castings (aka worm poop) to fertilize your garden.

Here are the worms right after I dumped them into the bin, starting to settle in and get cozy. They were in such a big twisted mass; I wonder how long it will take them to unwind themselves and spread out. Happy eating, little worms!