Portland, Pumpkin, Pasta, and The Professional

Mommy grew obsessive about a new pasta press attachment for her KitchenAid mixer, so we girls made a trek to Williams Sonoma in Portland to check it out and bring one home (less $ to drive up in person than pay shipping!). And naturally, while up there, we picked up a few additional absolutely-necessary kitchen items too. Must capitalize on the trip, of course. Here is Miss A making a hat out of a cake pan. She was confined to the stroller (Mom's no dummy!) but needed to get out some silliness and fidgety energy somehow.


After shopping we went to lunch. Well, we tried. Miri was very tired and cranky, so Mommy didn't get to have but one bite of her Thai Peanut Noodles . "To-go box, please!" -- it's a mother's mantra at this stage.


Aleaha helps put clean dishes away. She likes to help, and Mommy takes advantage of it, cuz we know it's a phase that won't last long!


Sunday night's project... Time to carve the obligatory jack-o-lantern. For a girl who doesn't like to get her hands gooey, it was surprising she wanted to gut the pumpkin.


Monday night's project... Fresh pasta! (Couldn't wait to dig into the new toy). One word: OHMYGOSH. Too yummy! And a fantastic job to entertain a three-year-old, since ya gotta make dinner anyway, ya know. The dough balls above are fed into the hopper, where the auger forces the dough through the extrusion plates. We have the cheesy set of plastic KitchenAid extrusion plates. Waste of time. But these babies? THEY WORK! Daddy was skeptical and wondered why we would spend so much dinero on this -- until he learned we can make homemade rigatoni and other shapes too.


Aleaha puts more dough in.


The machine cranks at Speed 10 to pump out the pasta.


And this is what you get! (Can't wait to try the other shapes)


Aleaha proudly shows off the results.


After dinner, she went down to her desk to "get some work done before bedtime, Mom." She's so devoted! (Mommy and Daddy set up a desk for her in the computer room. Bought us a few moments of peace, wherein we can surf ...and update the blog. ;) )

Cooking, Webs, and First Day Back at Work

Aleaha likes to cook, as we know. Here she is laying out "ghost cookies" -- those horrid pre-made Pilsbury things that come already mixed, formed, sliced, and ready to bake. Where's the cooking in that, you say?? We can do better than that... that's way too facile...


And so the next day, we graduate to "difficile". Truly. Here she is painting beeswax + butter on the insides of the cannele molds. Yes, we made canneles. You know 'em? They are divine little French cakes that takes *days* to make (and involves beeswax and special molds, For Heaven's Sake!). I have only 8 molds, and the batter makes 3 batches, and they take over an hour to bake EACH. I shoulda gotten a photo of the finished product, but I was SO DONE with cannele-making by then. They are marvelous, but by the time they are finished, my patience is shot and I just wanna go have a Hostess Cupcake. Or something. (But not a ghost cookie -- eewww!)


I saw a pretty web begging to be photographed. My aunt Jeannie takes the most outstanding pictures, and I am rotten at it. We just got a new digital camera, and I needed an excuse to play with it for a few minutes and learn some of its features.

I figured out how to make the background fuzzy and the foreground in focus. Gee, isnt' that why cameras have special lenses? Ours just has a nice little button you push so it will do that on its own. It kinda thinks for itself. But you still gotta know which button to push. I need a class. Or maybe I just need to read the darn manual!


Anybody know what these little flowers are? I was curious to see them growing in October.

This is Miri watching TV. Yes, I know how terrible that is. And yes, I let her sister do it too now and then. Bad mommy!


Jones keeps Aleaha's feet warm while she slurps her morning hot chocolate.


Tried to get a shot of the girls together. Not exactly what I was after.


Miss Miri napping in the swing. Aaawwww.




The many faces of Miri.


Playing like a big girl in her exersaucer.


Still can't get her to enjoy that outdoor swing.


Daddy works to clear the gutters in preparation for "the rains". We've got it down to a science now.... he wears a special glove to protect his hand, he digs in and grabs the wet fir needles, and throws handfuls of it down into the kiddie pool below. Then we work our way around the house. There's enough gunk to fill the pool about half full. Ick.


I found this witch costume last year after Halloween - got a great deal on it. Aleaha had seen how cute her cousin Ella looked as a purple-and-black witch last year, so I was feeling so smart and ahead of the game. But Aleaha doesn't want to be a witch this year. She wants to be a horse. Again! I managed to get her to try it on, just so I could snap a picture. (And hey, as long as the horse outfit fits her, that's fine. But I don't want to shell out for a new one!)


This is Miri in her new classroom on her First Day of School. It was mommy's first day back at work after maternity leave, and I think it was hard on us both. Harder for her, though. She wouldn't take a bottle in the morning, so I had to go feed her at lunchtime. She'll come around. She has to!!

Muddy Creek Maze

Catching a lucky break in the rain, we headed out to Muddy Creek Maze, just down the road a spell, to get in our third annual official welcome of Fall and Halloween.


For the first time, we attempted the maze. With Baby strapped on securely in the Bjorn and map in hand, we set out. For the first few twists and turns, it all seemed fine. And then suddenly I had no clue where we were. We stumbled along and made it to a few numbered checkpoints (which, interestingly, were not noted on said map), and then we were definitely lost. We exited the maze off to the side, not anywhere near where we should have been. Oh well. Off to other fun (and safe) activities!


Our next stop was the Moo Train. It had so happened that for the first two years, Aleaha had ridden on Dixie. So we asked if she could ride on Dixie again. But ol' Dixie had a broken seatbelt and was not able to be ridden.


Boots was accomodating, however. (Sidenote: We are in a phase in which any attempt to get her to smile on cue is met with a smirk.)


Miri took it all in from her special vantage point.


The opportunity to run and jump and burn off energy was very useful. Probably more so for Mommy's sanity than Aleaha's! ;)


Went through the tunnel a time or two.


There was a smaller kid-friendly maze built from large square hay bales. It's hard to see here given the color of her hair, but she was movin' fast!


"Mom, I want to go on that." Her climbing muscles have been itching lately, and she is monkeying all over everything at home. Figuring she would not be able to get up there, I said, "Sure, go for it."


She scrambled up the first layer easily, and fortunately was then stuck there and couldn't go any further. (At least, not immediately. Had I left her up there long enough, I'm sure she would have found a way.)




Managed to pull her away from the hay pyramid with promises of the fun stick-your-head-through-the-holes thingie. It worked. And she even cheesed it up a second for a picture.

Like a Good Boyscout...

We are ready for winter. Not that I'm looking forward to it, but there were nagging chores to finish up before it would be official....We have the last of the hay loaded into the barn, wood in the new woodshed, and pork in the freezer.







And it was a good thing we got done when we did, because the rains have begun! Even though it wasn't steady and months-long, this is a taste of what we know is just around the bend:


(Those were some raindrops! And it's a reminder that we also need to clean out the gutters. Oh joy, oh rapture.)

This Week in Pictures

OK, so Time magazine I am not. But here's a view of what we were up to this week....


Aleaha was rockin' out in the garage to some good ol' Elton John ("Crockodile Rock"). Guitar Hero, lookout! It's in this girl's genes, of course. :)


Miri gives a smile from her changing table. Once again, a nice clean butt makes for one happy baby.



CutiePoo in her "I Love Daddy" outfit.


Sign in 4 Star Meat Company's store front. (The piggies have gone to live in the freezer. They had a very good life.... sunshine, food, mud. And now they can make several families very happy. Our freezers are packed, and we are grateful.)


Miss Miri likes to look at herself in the mirror.


Doing laundry together. (Rumor has it that when Mommy was born, it was de rigeur for babies to ride in laundry baskets on the floor of the car. Carseats were practically unheard of.
Yikes.)



On Saturday night we made dinner for the One Hot Chili Pepper crew. Aleaha sliced the mushrooms, using the egg slicer. (Perfect job for a three-year-old!!)


Sunday morning the girls went out to breakfast with our friend Holly. They were pretty good, even with the long wait for a table (post-game crowd was quite large). Here's Miri catching some ZZZs in her carseat at the table. Mommy actually got to eat nearly all her meal while it was still hot! ('cept for the break to take Aleaha to the bathroom -- she's got a thimble-sized bladder and a penchant for going right in the middle of the meal. Ugh!)


After breakfast we hung out with Holly and Jon for a little while, and Aleaha picked apples and plums. Thank you, Jon and Holly!!