Camoflauge

Since we have returned from vacation, things have slowed down here. We are able to relax and get some stuff done around the house. because I couldn't bear to take care of the garden any longer (come on Frost!), I harvested the last of the tomatoes. When faced with a big pile of green tomatoes, I hit the internet. I made green tomato cake, fried green tomatoes and now green tomato chow chow. It turned out pretty good. Don't go looking for it in your stocking because my giant bowl of veggies turned into only 3 pints of relish.

In the backyard, the girls and the neighbor girls decided to camoflauge themselves so they could try to catch a squirrel. When asked what they were going to do with said squirrel, they didn't know. I suggested that they just observe squirrels in their natural habititat. Despite their best effort, I doubt that they sat still long enough to see a squirrel.

Wow, you can barely see them.

And some great news! Evie's cast came off today. her arm is very tender and she isn't moving it much. The Dr. said that she will probably be using it by this weekend, it just takes a while for kids to get their brain wrapped around not having a cast on. I can tell you this, that skin under the cast was so gross and dirty that I could barely wash it off without throwing up. Actually, just thinking about it makes me want to barf. The prescription for that is a nice warm bath with plenty of soap tonight.

Fun Fall Break

Yay, Fall break was last Thursday and Friday. For a change, we had no plans. The girls and I did some Master Gardener work and went to the Children's museum on Thursday with some friends. We had a fun time. I had no plans for Friday so it was just a putz around the house kind of day. I promised I would make sugar cookies for them to use the Halloween cookie cutters. For this occasion, I decided it was high time to break in my new mixer. Thanks Grandma and Grandpa Taller! The mixer works great. It is quiet and I no longer fear that I will be electrocuted or the house will burn down.

Annalise is sporting some rarely seen pigtails. I told the girls we had to wear our hair out of our eyes when we are baking cookies. I have been having a big problem with hair in the mouth and we are one trip away from Grandma's beauty shop and getting a short haircut.

The Joy of Cooking is the best cookbook ever. I am a horrible sugar cookie maker. They never turn out for me. But using this recipe I had some great results. That cookbook also gave us the idea of rolling out the dough between 2 pieces of wax paper and then refrigerating it as to make the cutting out part cleaner and easier. It worked great. Way to go again, Joy.

Later that day, we joined some friends at Connor Prairie. It seems that all our friends in the neighborhood had the same idea because we saw a lot of people we know. Of course, our first stop was the barn to love on all the animals. We are really going to miss Connor Prairie next month when all the outside exhibits close.

In one of my very favorite places, the loom house, the girls assisted on weaving a bookmark.

And outside of the potter's shed, they spent lots of time grinding down clay.

Since Labor day, the kids have been asking for one more camping trip. The forcast on Friday night was clear, full moon and a low of 47. So everyone got their warm jammies on and loaded up their blankets and cows for a trip to the wild backyard.

Jim reports that everyone settled down quickly and fell asleep by 9. Annalise needed to come inside around midnight, but he and Evie stayed in the tent until 7 am. I made pumpkin pancakes to celebrate the last camping trip of the year.

After breakfast, we decorated our sugar cookies. Annalise did a pretty good job with the frosting.

Evie did really well with her left hand. The cast comes off on Wednesday. Cross your fingers that it is healed.

We all worked together to create some spooky looking cookies.

Good news on the costume front, we found a purple wig.

The hairstyle isn't ideal, but you can't be picky a week before Halloween.

Boilermaker Land

We loaded up the car this morning and pointed north to West Lafayette as we do on many Saturday mornings. This particular day was also Purdue's homecoming and we didn't get our act together to get a babysitter in time so the kids went with us. This did mean a quick trip to Dick's to get Evie a new Purdue t-shirt as she has outgrown all of hers. My former Boilermaker with my future Boilermakers. Even though the game was against Minnesota (go Gophs), I wore my black t-shirt because that's what Drew Brees would want me to do.
There were lots of fun family activities on the main quad. The engineering building had lots of displays and things for kids to do. They were probably looking for a little older perspective students, but these two were really interested in making sail cars. We also visited the freshman labs (and had some cookies) and Evie and Jim looked at other exhibits. Annalise and I ventured outside to hear the band play and see the worlds largest drum.

The Tallers and the Boilermaker Special?? Looks like a Christmas card to me. Check. After this we headed over to Jim's old Fraternity house for lunch. Yes, my 4 and 6 year old made their first trip to a Fraternity house. Fortunately , no one gave them beer (or gave me beer--hey....). Evie proclaimed it to be stinky (agreed). We had some sandwiches and cookies and managed not to touch too much before we headed over for the game. For those of you who want to know the status of the house--it looks exactly the same except for the young men who live there are not nearly as attractive as they used to be.

Evie poses beside the giant Boilermaker statue that is outside of the stadium. It was there we heard the horrible news that our favorite Boiler Basketball player, Robbie Hummel reinjuried his ACL and is likely out for the season. Boo.

After a while we made it to our seats. During halftime, we enjoyed the All American Band's tribute to Broadway musicals.

Our little cheerleader had a great time dancing to the band. Both girls did really well during the game. We brought plenty of snacks and they spent a good long time working in work books. We made it to the end of the game and Purude actually won!

Our post game picture. We are only a little sunburned

We stayed for the post game band concert. Since the stadium cleared out, we walked clear down to row 1 and watched the end of the show.

On the way out, they decided to roll and run down the big hill behind the stadium.

When we got back to the car, we tailgated with some drink boxes and muffins before the long ride home. It was a great day!

We're Back

Jim and I returned last Friday from our awesome European vacation. I'm happy to report that all kids and caregivers were safe and sound when we returned. The same could not be said of our old laptop. Yep, old. While we were gone, it had the blue screen of death. Jim devoted much time on Saturday figuring out the problem could only be solved by a new laptop. So, that's what the hold up has been on blog updates. Without further delay, the highlights of our vacation pics. I won't make you sit through all 900 pictures.

We flew into Amsterdam for a night. It was a great city. I loved all the canals and the boats and the old buildings. We stayed in the red building. It was 423 years old! That's the stairway I'm walking down. it was steep and narrow. In fact, to get furniture into those places, they just hoisted it through the windows! This left picture below the text is just a street we were on. The buildings were awesome! Amsterdam was a lot nicer than I imagined. We visited the Anne Frank museum (lower right) and admired all the boats. But with the jet lag, and all the stuff we wanted to see, we didn't have time to ride a canal boat. We did walk through the red light district (sad) and drank some local brews before we hit the sack. We needed to get up for a flight to Munich Germany.

In Munich, we stayed in central location between the Marienplatz where there was lots of shopping, markets, and museums

and also close to the world's original Oktoberfest! Yes, that is me, blending in.

That place was like Christmas at Disneyland with a dash of the beach thrown in for good measure. We drank more than our share of beers. And we stole the stiens. We are those people .

After a few too many stiens, the next day had a slow start. We walked around slowly and ended up in the German Museum. Think Smithsonian but only on technology. The exhibits on airplanes and boats were interesting, but I was getting pretty board when we entered the room on printing presses and there were about 100 different presses through time. Snore. we did see Sputnik. Now if I could just get Jim to let me tour the Mir space station the next time we go to the Wisconsin Dells.

Our time in Munich was far too short. We ate and drank all kinds of delicicous food. We hope to return again for another Oktoberfest because it was so stinking crowded that we never even made it into one of the fancy tents. Just the beer gardens. One problem with The EU. Coffee is too small. This was the large.

Back to the Weisn one more time to drink a little more beer and try to get in the tents. Behind Jim is a "tent". It was more like the biggest pole barn you could imagine.

It was so crowded on the last day that we couldn't get in anywhere. we almost lost all hope of sitting down at all when we stumbled in a service entrance of a fancy tent. We found some friendly Americans and enjoyed a few more. This was vacation after all!

All that beer drinking fun had to come to an end and we got on a train to Paris. We slept in the sleeper car.

We arrived in Paris during the Terror Alert. We were supposed to blend in and be hyper aware of weirdos. Instead, Jim did this in front of the Louvre.

Eating pastry in the park with the Effiel tower in the background? Totally Parisian

I liked this statue. I renamed it to be "I forgot to charge the camera battery!"

We visited Notre Dame and climbed to the top

Us in Paris

Us on the top of the Effiel tower. The very top. It was rainning. Oh Well.

The Effiel tower. We climbed the steps to the second level (did i mention how much we ate and drank?) and then took the elevator to the top.

Louvre at night

Us inside at night. That is a big place. completely overwhelming. Pretty soon I had seen enough naked, marble people.

This is me exhausted in the louvre.

We also had the chance to see Laura and Jean Marc, Jim's sister and her husband. They drove us around and fed us a couple of times.

All in all, the greatest vacation ever. Now it's back to the grind of everyday living, but we still are basking in the afterglow of our trip. We also have a constant reminder of all the good food when we try to zip up our jeans.