Applesauce Anyone?

A few weeks ago I got a Victorio Strainer 200, which I think shows that I have really come of age. I love being a stay-at-home mom; you can get anything on ebay without the go-to-work dad knowing about it until there's an open package on the table and he says, "What's this, honey?" A couple of friends and I found an itty-bitty apple orchard where they let us pick all the apples we want for free. It was then up to us to convert the apples into applesauce. We made 50 quarts - that represents a lot of worms cut out.


Once I recovered from our last batches of applesauce I thought it would be fun for Ryan and I to go apple picking. That leads me to the next topic: I am not allowed to choose what we are doing for our date night for a couple of weeks . . . Earlier this summer I knocked on the door of a houses in the neighborhood where I walk to ask if I could have some apples from their apple tree. He told me that I could take the whole $%?& tree. I took this as a positive invitation to come back and get rid of the apples for him. So then last Friday, I got Ryan all excited* to pick apples and he asked me if they knew we were coming. I danced around the question by referring to the previously mentioned conversation and then I thought I would make Ryan feel better by telling him that I thought the people were gone on vacation or moved out or something. This did not improve Ryan's overall impression of my date idea. I think that he might have used words like illegal, trespassing, breaking and entry, and vandalism. I responded by telling him that we were actually doing our neighbor a favor and protecting his lawnmower from running over all the rotten apples, but he was not convinced. We drove by and I knocked on the door, but no one answered. This was the about the time that Ryan suggested that we just go out for ice cream and call it a night.

This is a portion of our garden, the part that is taking over our porch. We took this picture a couple of weeks ago. The tomato plant now reaches the top of our porch and has over 40 tomatoes growing on it. Our swiss chard that you can see in front of the tomatoes is doing really well, probably Ryan would say that it was doing too well. He has not acquired a taste for the deliciousness that is swiss chard. We planted snap peas and lettuce for our fall harvest and they are doing great. It is amazing how much you can get out of a little space with good planning and miracle grow.

Helen is doing great. As you can see, she loves chewing on my shoulder and taking baths. One of her newest tricks is to fuss when she's alone on her blanket until someone comes over to talk to her. Most likely she will end up being a social butterfly like her father (ha, ha). She also likes forcing her entire fist into her mouth to suck on. Good thing she is not a snake, she would probably put her whole arm in there. Ryan's favorite daddy-daughter-time activity these days is to put her in tummy time and then show her how to roll over again and again. If Helen could talk she'd probably call it daddy-daughter-torture-time; she's really not a fan of rolling yet.

*by excited I mean, willing to participate if forced to