All hail wire cutters!

From the time I was small through my teen years, I lived around animals. Large ones. The cow and horse variety. Anyway, animals need to be fed and that was often my job. Such animals eat alfalfa and grain, and typically the only way you get into a bale is with a good pair of wire cutters. Such a tool is a farming necessity.

Flash forward 20 years, and here I am in my suburban life far away from the smell and daily needs of my bovine and equine friends. (Alright, not that far. There is a dairy every few miles where I live. Upstate New York is major league rural farm country.) Anyway, last Christmas as Bob and I watched our children happily stare into boxes that they could not break into if they tried, it occurred to me that scissors and knives we were attacking them with were useless. Suddenly, my early life training came back to me and in our tool set (the one that so seldom sees use) I found a blessed, worshiped pair of wire cutters. Merry Christmas children! Boxes AND the ability to open them.

Flash forward to this Christmas, where smartly the night before the big event I got out my small screw driver (because half the toys are bolted in with tiny screws as well as smartly twisted wires) and the wire cutters. I thought myself prepared. What I was not prepared for, however, was a new form of Chinese torture: taped, double layer boxes and three to four wires per item.

It's not enough to have the toy tied down. No, it has to be posed and perfect as if the squishy toy fish are actually floating in an ocean. Barbie's head has to actually have a wire in it to hold her upright and immobile. A toy that unboxed weighs less than two pounds took me--and I'm not joking here--7 minutes to open. Every year industrial design takes a leap forward and this year, rather than a box where you just open the flaps, you must fight with taped edges as well. It's as if someone transported my grandmother to China and asked her to start packaging boxes to make sure they made it safely to America. This means you have to slice through layer upon layer of tape before you can get to the portion you were prepared for, the smartly twisted wries. So, new tool: box cutter then clip, snip, clip x 12. Toy for a child too small to care free of its bonds.

If this is the way China fights a war, though, bring it on. They may snicker as they twist a few million boxes into knots every day laughing at the frustrations of their American brethren but I'm on to them. I'm farm-trained and I'm armed with wire cutters, a screw driver and box cutters. Next year I'm re-adding scissors to my arsenal. Bring it on, China!

Anyhow, I would post Christmas pictures except they are all on Bob's camera, which is difficult to locate at the moment. We had a wonderful Christmas. Jack is loving his Hot Wheels race track and the work bench his grandpa sent him. Ellie opened the Baby Alive doll my dad sent and has refused to open anything on her own since. Today, we finally got her to open the Barbie doll Bob bought her, but most of her presents are still wrapped under the tree. We figure she'll get to them before her birthday. Otherwise, I'll slap a happy birthday card on them and save myself the money! Bob filled my stocking with the Bath and Body works shampoo and conditioner I disocvered at his hotel in Utah. I'm loving that! I guess he got tired of me begging to bring the sample sizes home. Sorry for the lack of Christmas pics, but here is a picture of Small and me. He is growing like a weed, blowing bubbles, rolling over and already trying to crawl. Amazing.

Notes on a day...

Notes to self:

1. Do not start making cookies with tired children at 7 p.m. and expect the process to go smoothly. The flour on the floor is your fault.

2. Do not give an almost 2-year-old a cup with no lid to drink out of while sitting on your bed on your side and expect the bed to stay dry. Do not get upset when you have to change the sheets.

3. Perhaps three days before Christmas is not the time to buckle down on how much TV the kids watch. At least you could have saved 30 minutes for dinner preparation. That would have saved a lot of screaming.

4. If the neighbors give you their old dollhouse three days before Christmas, put it away until after Christmas. That said, even though she won't care about her Christmas presents, at least Ellie was entertained for the bulk of the day.

5. Do not get upset when your husband calls from the mall three days before Christmas to ask you what you want. Remember that he is a man, just a man. A man with no memory who had a long day. (A drill, BTW. Seriously, I want a drill. Something cordless I could hang drywall with if I so chose.) At least he was not shopping on Christmas Eve.

6. If it's midnight and you are blogging instead of finishing the cookies or the dishes, well, you have issues.

O soup divine!

In stalking a friend's blog recently, I stumbled upon this soup recipe. It might be one of the best things I've ever made. My kids actually ate it (sort of, which is an improvement over not at all.) and my husband said (and this is a high compliment) "Let's keep that soup in the line-up." Easy and delicious... Oh, just as a note, I used celery leaves instead of parsley, because, well, we got a full foot or more of snow today and I did not have the means to go get fresh parsley.

Frugal shoppers take notice...

I just found the coolest thing: an on-line tool that will allow you to price check via cell phone from any store to make sure you're getting the best bargain. It can even sync with your Google calendar to tell you where to you need to be and it's all free. I started using Google's calendar to keep track of Bob and I love it. I've already saved Frucall's information in my phone. OK, i haven't tried it yet, but it seems to be a great way to save some dough.

Drunk on Facebook

For a while, my best friend Janis Aden has tried to convince me that Facebook was a nifty pit stop on the information super highway that was not simply a landing zone for everyone 21 and younger. I refused to believe her. I practically patted her on the head long distance and told her she'd lost her mind. After all, I'm over 30. I have three kids, two church callings, recently racked up a $36.82 library fine and $103 washing machine repair bill, and I spend an inordinate amount of time perfecting my role as a poor housekeeper. I do NOT have time for Facebook.

Then the note from Clay popped up.

Dammit.

Excuse the strong language, but ever since the simple invitation of "Is this Mandy from New York?" I've been addicted to Facebook. Trust me when I say I do NOT have time for Facebook. But like most addictions, it rules your life. I've never had an addition, but they're tough. You are powerless to resist. You may not want to spend every spare second tooling around going, "I wonder what happened to (fill in the blank)," but you can't help yourself. You WANT to find friends. You want to see your little friend number climb and not feel insignifcant when you're added as a friend by someone who has 278 other "friends" in comparison with your 43. I'd feel a little lame about the whole thing if so many of the rest of them weren't out there, too. I feel like I'm sitting in an institute class circa 1998 and I'm loving every minute of it.

So, it's all Clay's fault. He is my friend Susan's husband and an old friend of mine and yes, I will take credit for their actual introduction in summer 1999 or thereabouts. He and another friend were looking for me and found someone with a name that could be my married name but was it really? Clay took a shot in the dark. This is amusing because I half figure if he really wanted to chat with me, he could have asked Susan for my email address. Or my phone number. Or my address if we want to be archaic. Anyway, he found that one day after listening to Janis' drunken ravings, I signed up. Now, unlike blogspot, I couldn't just lurk around and see how people are with the anonymity that I enjoy. You actually have to be social on Facebook, put yourself out there waving a flag saying, "Hey, didn't I know you once 10 years ago? Let's be friends....again!" That seemed time consuming and a little daunting: "What if no one wants to be my friend...again?" I gave up, leaving nothing but a name out there. That's all it took. Now I find myself obsessing over everyone else's day-to-day ramblings. I have FOUND people ! Jon and Hilary! Nikole and Kelly (they lived and Cleveland and I didn't know it ARGH!), the Masons, the Cottams, the, the...people I barely remember...they're all out there on Facebook logging their moment-to-moment activities and I'm hooked. I can't stop caring that Geoff is taking a final, the Shawn likes Banana cream pies, that Sara can't make her computer work right, that Jan made cookies, that Jennifer is going to eat sushi, that Susan wishes she had my woodstove, that Jo is wondering where to find Emily, that Teri and Jim are still baiting each other, that Veronica got a new dog, that Jeannie and Hannah posted their Christmas letters and I'm going to copy Hannah, that Bro. Woodbury just read a great book and on and on.

I really do care.

And now I need to find some limits. :) Is there a rehab for facebook? Or, is there a point where it becomes less amusing?

Who knows. But in the meantime, for people who only come here to see pictures of my kids, the latest:

Posing on Thanksgiving Day. You have no idea how hard it is to get Ellie to sit for a picture. My grandmother suggested spanking her, but somehow, I just don't think that would help me get a good picture of her.

Hannah gets roped into helping Jack make applesauce. We sauced over a bushel of apples and Jack actually did the acutual saucing (handle turning) for the entire batch.

Jack and his "best little buddy the cutest baby in the world Small.

Ellie in a hostile bouncy seat take over.

Daddy helps Jack top off the tree.

Robbie loves Jimmy

A silly or sweet moment. Robbie learned to roll over onto his stomach last week, a move which typically ticks him off because he doesn't have any skills once he gets there. However, rolling to his side has proved very useful. Today, he rolled over and played with the Jimmy's ear for about 10 minutes. Jimmy is such a great dog, so wonderful with the kids. We are grateful to have such a good family pet for our kids to grow up with.

Sweet dreams Ellie bean

I'm feeling a bit sad this evening. In the room right above me, Jack and Ellie are asleep for the first time in twin beds in the same room. For a while, I've thought Ellie was ready for the move to a big girl bed. She has been in her crib in our tiny nursery for her entire 22 months while Jack has slept on the bottom bunk of his bunk beds since six weeks before she was born.

It was a lot harder convincing Jack to go to the big bed. He was really excited about the bunk beds when they showed up at our house with the ladder, the drawers and shelves on this particular bed. But when push came to shove, he spent two weeks begging to go back to the "baby bed" before he finally slept in his big boy bed.

Tonight, Bob and I finally tore the bunks down so the kids could sleep in the same room. I just haven't felt right about letting Jack sleep up top just yet. He's going through a major fear phase and won't go to the bathroom in the middle of the night (or the middle of the day, for that matter) without one of us with him. Thus, our only option was to split the beds. It's not perfect, but until he's a little older, a little more confident getting up at night, split they will stay. This will allow Robbie to move from the bassinet by our bed to the crib and allows Ellie, of course, the option of a big girl bed.

The kids were so excited as everything got moved around and immediately started bouncing on what is Ellie's bed. She was so excited, so thrilled to be with her Jack. For some reason, her eagerness and the empty crib just made me a bit sad. I don't know if it's because the reality that they don't stay small hit me so forcefully or that she is so independent, she didn't need me like her brother did. Whatever it is, I am happy with a slightly heavey heart tonight.

We had our normal bedtime routine of bed and books and then putting them down. This is where the challenge arose. I see several more days of Ellie being drunk on freedom, running down the hall, getting up to play with the train track already winding it's way out the door. Giggling and singing "I Am a Child of God" to her big, soft doll that she insisted sleep with her. There was a tussle over light on or off. Ellie is used to sleeping in the dark while Jack is afraid of both the dark and shadows and can't decide which is worse. Tonight, keeping Ellie in bed, thus, minimal (one night light), won. I couldn't figure out who to snuggle with to sing what my kids call "the baby song," otherwise known as "Baby Mine" from "Dumbo." They love that song, and usually, I cuddle Ellie and sing it to her before bed, then I go lay with Jack and sing it to him before he sleeps. In the same room, I sat in the middle snuggling no one, singing and trying to figure out how to make that right for everyone. I only had to wrangle her to back into bed about five times. :) Jack narrated the whole event, commenting at each escape that "maybe Ellie wants to sleep in your bed," Jack code for "I want to sleep in your bed...again."

Forgetting my silly saddness, the move has already had one positive effect. As we were settling down for books tonight, Jack said he was happy to have Ellie in his room.

"Now I won't be scared anymore," he said.

And as I finally wrangled them into bed after an hour of chasing Ellie and putting her back down, she looked up and just said, "Jack?"

And he looked across the room and said, "Mommy, I need Ellie here with me."

She's there. Both of them are. Sound asleep in their twin beds.

happy halloween and other stuff...

Our Halloween was great, a simple tour around the neighborhood with the munchkins and a few parties previous to that. I made the kids' costume: Jack was a dinosaur (a stegosaurus if you asked him...) and Ellie was a fairy princess. I like to make their costumes for some reason. When shopping at Wal-Mart one day for some supplies, the kids spotted baby costumes and insisted that Robbie be a pumpkin for the holiday. The costume kept him warm and Jack was very happy that "Small" was dressed up as well.

My thoughts on the Democratic landslide? God bless America. We live in a great country when your team can lose and the world doesn't end. Democracy is a wonderful thing. Life goes on. On the upside, Obama is inheriting such a mess he has no where to go but up, really. So good luck and here's to seeing how the next four years go.

And now, on to recent photos:

Just because the back of their costumes were where the action was....

Mr. and Mrs. Regal around the corner always have some interesting costume or another to share. This year, Mr. Regal was a rather large hula girl. This isn't the best shot, but Ellie just stood and stared at him for probably 3 or 4 minutes before we could convince her to keep going. He even did a dance for us. :)

Doughnut holes and cider at the fire hall.

We ran into Butterfly Sophie trick-or-treating with her friends. She and Small look perfect together.

My camera is having some issues focusing. It certainly has nothing to do with the day I left it sitting outside by the sandbox the night of a downpour. Anyway, the Lonsberry Halloween crew. Somewhere this night, Aubrey and her boyfriend, Brandon, were Santa and Mrs. Claus, but I haven't seen any photographic proof of that.

The end result: piles and piles of candy that Mom, to their chagrin, barely lets them eat.

Remember to vote Nov. 4

Please, please, please vote for John McCain. He isn't perfect. He's old. He's boring. If I hear the word "mavrick" one more time, I might scream. But above all, he is NOT Barak Obama. For the case against Teflon Obama, read this.

Also, a few quotes from an Oct. 18 McCain speech in Miami, Fla.:

The response from Senator Obama and his campaign yesterday was to attack Joe. People are digging through his personal life and he has TV crews camped out in front of his house. He didn't ask for Senator Obama to come to his house. He wasn't recruited or prompted by our campaign. He just asked a question. And Americans ought to be able to ask Senator Obama tough questions without being smeared and targeted with political attacks.

The question Joe asked about our economy is important, because Senator Obama's plan would raise taxes on small businesses that employ 16 million Americans. Senator Obama's plan will kill those jobs at just the time when we need to be creating more jobs. My plan will create jobs, and that's what America needs.

Senator Obama says that he wanted to spread your wealth around. When politicians talk about taking your money and spreading it around, you'd better hold onto your wallet. Senator Obama claims that he wants to give a tax break to the middle class, but not only did he vote for higher taxes on the middle class in the Senate, his plan gives away your tax dollars to those who don't pay taxes.

That's not a tax cut, that's welfare. America didn't become the greatest nation on earth by redistributing wealth; we became the greatest nation by creating new wealth....

What America needs in this hour is a fighter; someone who puts all his cards on the table and trusts the judgment of the American people. I come from a long line of McCains who believed that to love America is to fight for her. I have fought for you most of my life. There are other ways to love this country, but I've never been the kind to do it from the sidelines.

I know you're worried. America is a great country, but we are at a moment of national crisis that will determine our future. Will we continue to lead the world's economies or will we be overtaken? Will the world become safer or more dangerous? Will our military remain the strongest in the world? Will our children and grandchildren's future be brighter than ours?

My answer to you is yes. Yes, we will lead. Yes, we will prosper. Yes, we will be safer. Yes, we will pass on to our children a stronger, better country. But we must be prepared to act swiftly, boldly, with courage and wisdom.

I know what fear feels like. It's a thief in the night who robs your strength.

I know what hopelessness feels like. It's an enemy who defeats your will.

I felt those things once before. I will never let them in again. I'm an American. And I choose to fight.

Don't give up hope. Be strong. Have courage. And fight.

Fight for a new direction for our country. Fight for what's right for America.

Fight to clean up the mess of corruption, infighting and selfishness in Washington.

Fight to get our economy out of the ditch and back in the lead.

Fight for the ideals and character of a free people.

Fight for our children's future.

Fight for justice and opportunity for all.

Stand up to defend our country from its enemies.

Stand up, stand up, stand up and fight. America is worth fighting for. Nothing is inevitable here. We never give up. We never quit. We never hide from history. We make history.

Now, let's go win this election and get this country moving again.

Just for fun...

I just discovered the silliest way to waste time on the internet: http://www.yearbookyourself.com/. I can't believe I wasted precious time on this. However, I LAUGED at how silly this was.

A glance at the Lonsberry's through the decades:

If we'd met somewhere around 1962:

I'm rockin' 1970, eh?

And finally, the horror of 1990:

Westward we went...

Life has been a bit hectic for us. Packing for a trip with the kids and not knowing what Utah's weather was going to be like (80 on day one, de-iced the plane when we left 10 days later) made packing a challenge that I managed to spread over two or three days. It's sort of a blur in my mind (partly because we decided to self-publish Bob's Christmas book this year and I was promoted from mom/wife/assistant to graphic design staff. But that's another story.) Anyway, we left New York on Oct. 2 for a 10-day trip. Bob had several work commitments for the station he works for in Utah, KNRS 570 AM, and we had a long-planned weekend with my mother, step-dad and brother, Jeremiah. (I've always called him JR, but he seems to think that as a 30-year-old, he deserves the respect of his full name, so I'm trying...) My sister and her kids were also supposed to meet us, but car and work troubles kept them in New Mexico.

A friend of mine from college, Jeannie (Yee) Farnsworth ,has a lovely home in Cottonwood Heights that she uses as a vacation rental. She gave me a friend deal and can I just say staying in a home over a hotel for the bulk of our trip was just marvelous. And Jeannie's house was just so fun, so comfortable. She is a genius to begin with, but she just thought of everything in setting her house up for rental when she and her family moved to Arizona. I came thinking that although I'd be staying there for six of our 10 nights, I would have to buy things like peanut butter and jelly, laundry detergent. Oh no. All basics covered, a fantastic view, comfortable beds. A hot tub....(JR and his girlfriend Alicia sure liked it. I never had time to even try...). So, if you are heading to Utah and care for comfortable family accommodations, might I recommend Jeannie's Ski Place? You'll see a lot of the house in the background of some of the photos. I swear, that house made our travels sooooooo easy.

The kids traveled just famously and we had a good time visiting with my parents and seeing the sites. The kids always like Temple Square, or at least we make them go, point out the important stuff and then try to keep them out of the fountains. We liked the dinosaur museum at Thanksgiving Point so much we went twice, once with grandma and grandpa and once with Bob and Lee just so everyone could see how cool it was. We ate out far more than I'd like to (we were traveling) and now we're back to our non-stop hectic lives. I keep thinking, "Things will slow down after..." So far, there has been no "after."
Anyway, here are some photos from our trip. I'm going to post a few just to get started and get back to it when I'm not so tired. (I was up until 3 a.m. this morning making a dinosaur costume for Jack and a fairy costume for Ellie so they could go dressed to the ward trunk-or-treat.)

Ellie was not interested in being in this photo, so here are the boys and I at the Salt Lake City LDS Temple. The top picture is of Jack and Ellie viewing the "Christus." It's interesting to me that children always seem to recognize that statue as one of Jesus without much explanation.

Every year we go back and try the same shot with a different child. Ellie's shot last year was all sunshine and happiness. Robbie looks, um, put out.

Bob with Robbie, Lee and Jack. There wasn't a high degree of compliance with the kids and pictures on this trip, as you can see from Lee's attempt to get Jack to sit still and smile.

Jack and Grandpa Ruben played all day and watched some TV together. They were the best of pals.

Grandpa had a way with all the kids. He could make Robbie smile...

...and helped Ellie fall asleep for a nap in an unfamiliar place.

Jack and Ellie rock out with Uncle Jeremiah. They were just banging on his guitar. When I thanked him later for letting them do that he said, "Mandy, they couldn't bang it near as hard as I do." JR operates a crane by day in Bozeman, MT and is the power behind Montana's premier heavy metal band, Atomic 45, by night. His girlfriend Alicia is studying accounting at Montana State University. The accountant and the rock star...hmmm....

Jack and Ellie Lonsberry take over KNRS. Fortunately, this radio board didn't appear to be connected to anything on-air at the time.

This is my friend, Annette Robinson. Annette got sick of picking zucchini. Enter Jack who can't pass up an opportunity to hunt for vegetables. I think she let this one go just a bit long...




Jack and Lee wait for their dam to break at the dinosaur museum's erosion table. Lee was a saint on this trip, playing with the kids, chauffeuring people around, playing tour guide.

Ellie and Lee say goodbye.

So cute, however...

In the land of photographing children, things often don't go as planned. They were so cute, looked so nice, yet things just didn't work out.

Jack wouldn't hold the baby or sit up. Ellie didn't want to be involved at all. Robbie didn't have a clue what was happening. Still, I think it was a moment worth sharing.

I just thought she looked so cute in this photo taken by her dad.

Useless trivia from the Lonsberry house: Robbie gets called "Small" by his brother and dad. Jack actually doesn't call him anything else. Ellie calls him "Baby." When he cries to alert us that he's awakened from a nap she says, "Mommy, baby crying, mommy." It sounds really cute.

Chapel groundbreaking

Our little branch became a ward a few months ago and we're getting a new building! Here's some useless trivia for my LDS friends: If it were still the early 1800s, Brighman Young would live in our ward boundaries. There you go. Anyway, we recently broke ground on the new chapel and our ceremonial groundbreaking managed to draw some of our community leaders to help toss out some dirt. Bob and I serve on our stake public relations committee and that is one of our challenges, how to normalize the Church in our communities, get us involved and create experiences where we mingle with community leaders. The calling gives me a chance to use all those journalism skills and can be incredibly time consuming. But, we're enjoying it.

Anyway, our bishop sent a letter asking for us all to wear church dress with a note that while the children would participate in the groundbreaking, they shouldn't get too dirty. Well, he changed his mind on church dress and only part of the ward got the message. I'll let you determine whether or not my kids got dirty.

Jack near construction equipment. Little boy heaven. Oddly, it was even harder to keep Ellie away from the big machines.


Here they are not getting dirty.

Stake President Cary Jensen helps Jack and Ellie fill baby food jars with groundbreaking dirt. None of them are getting dirty.

No dirt here, Mommy!

"They shouldn't get too dirty."

Prayers needed

Lots of people in my life could use some prayers right now.

First of all, some old friends of mine from Reno, Brian and Jami McCombs were just blessed with the birth of their third child, a boy, Ezra. However, he was diagnosed with a rare disorder called Pierre Robin Sequence which is a very small lower jaw, a retracted tongue, and cleft palate. Brian, Jami and the baby were flown to Salt Lake City's Primary Children's Hospital where they are awaiting surgery for Ezra's jaw. They have two little children at home. My heart goes out to them. I know God answers prayers and perhaps if you can think of them, it will help their prayers for Ezra be answered. For those of you who know them, you can check on Ezra's progress at ourmagnumopus.blogspot.com.

And pray for my family, specifically my Aunt Gail and cousins Jet, Joel and Chris and their families. My great Uncle Jerry passed away Monday evening. He was 67. His passing was something of a surprise to me. Apparently, he had been quietly fighting liver cancer. He hadn't told anyone except, of course, my aunt and Jet, and only him because they were staying at Jet's home coming to and from treatments. I guess the treatments wore him out and he came down with pneumonia recently and died from complications of that. I think the whole family is in a state of shock over losing our gentle giant. For the many of you who never met my uncle, he was a funny, kind man, a man's man. A cowboy. One of those men that "retires" just to keep working at whatever he could find to do. He rode horses and gardened, tinkered around with machines and rehab old Volkswagen Bugs. He loved the military channel and had a major stubborn streak about answering the telephone. I just can't say enough about him. I can't make it home for the funeral, so I will keep replaying the following scene in my mind.

We lasted visited home when Ellie was just 5 months old. She was born with a hemangioma on her head, a little cluster of blood vessels that pop up. Hers was the size of a dime on her temple and went away when she was about 7 months old. Anyway, I took Jack and Ellie to lunch at the International Cafe where I met my parents and Gail and Jerry for lunch. As they came in Jerry plopped down and looked at Ellie in my arms. He is ALWAYS on the lookout for a way to get my goat, to rib me over something. He is not cruel and would never try to hurt anyone's feelings. But, he looked at me and said, "Mandy, what the hell did you do that baby's head?"
I was a bit sensitive to people pointing out her little bump, but before I could say anything, Gail hit him and with a look of genuine horror said, "Jerry, she was born with that!"
For a good 30 seconds or so, his face fell. I could tell he was sorry he'd said it. But he had a sense of humor and in that time, I think everyone knew he hadn't meant anything. So, he realized he couldn't tease me about dropping her, but picked up where he left off and asked again, "Well, what the hell did you do that baby's head?" We all laughed. Perhaps that isn't as funny written as it was the day it happened, mostly because I can see the look on his face when he switched from genuine sorrow to realizing he could still tease me.

He was a wonderful, quiet man who will be so dearly missed. And my aunt's advice right now is to immediately give a hug to those you love because you never know when it might be your last chance. Sage advice.

Smiley Prince Robert

Hello, I'd like you all to meet Prince Robert the demanding. Like most newborns, he thinks the world revolves around him. Sadly for the rest of the family, most of the time, he's right. We're happy to report that Robbie has mellowed a ton and has learned a new trick: He smiles. A lot. Especially at 6:30 a.m. I am not a morning person. Thus, my children's habit of sleeping past 8 a.m. does not bother me one bit. Robbie's early bird habits, argh. However, it is really hard not to sit and grin back at him, no matter the hour. Cutie kid, though, eh?

Here he is getting serious.

And a cutie scrunchy face.

Harvest time

Well, we've been deeply engaged in trying to bring forth the fruits of the meager harvest we eek out in our little village home. This means I have a dehydrater full of celery (had to try something with it...), several jars of canned tomaotes (had to do something with them all...) and my personal favorite, jarred apple cider.

Bob planted apple trees in our yard long before we met. The entire time we've been married, I wished we had a way to salvage the rather wormy and otherwise buggy apples, but nothing came to mind. Enter our good friends, Dan and Rachel Howells, the local king and queen of harvest time. Rachel is a very frugal lady and when family members were helping to clean out her grandmother's house for a move, Rachel bypassed the dressers and other furniture for a cider press. It may be one of the few things of which my very modest friend is vocally proud. Anyone with access to an apple tree has pretty much set up camp at the Howells place for cider pressing and preservation lessons, including us. We borrowed their apple picker and Bob picked as many apples as he could off our two trees. We filled every container we had at the house and hauled it over. Every Tuesday night, we feed the missionaries and the college students that attend our ward. (There are three students and whomever they show up with....makes for interesting Tuesday evenings...) The students had a blast helping press cider last Tuesday, and Bob worked very hard to press our apples into five gallons of cider. That doesn't sound like much, really, but it took me two hours to process it. I am the proud owner of 21 quarts of apple cider, which I plan on drinking on special occasions through the winter and turning into jelly.

Bob writes about our doings here. Everyone else, proceed to the pictures.

The Process

Man picks apples. Wishes wife would stop taking pictures of everything.

Men press cider. That would be Dan Howells in the hat doing the hard work, turning that handle to chop the apples up. Sister Bennett is tossing apples in. Bob is turning the handle to press chopped apples into juice. Yes, this is a lot of work for a few gallons of juice.

This is not Ellie's first cider pressing rodeo. Last time we did this, I gave her a cup. Left to her own defenses, she figured out a new way of getting juice into her mouth. I don't think her binky ever tasted better.

Simple delights. There is a reason I call her my little fuzzy head.

College student and missionary labor helps churn out 20 gallons of cider. What these kids won't do for a free meal...

So, you bring the cider home. Put the kids/husband to bed. Start boiling cider. Before it boils over, you ladel it into hot jars. Put the lids on and they will seal themselves. There you have 21 quarts of lovely, preserved juice. Yummy!