We went to the pumpkin patch last week and our goal was to buy 100 pounds of pumpkins, because if you get 100 pounds, then the price goes down to $0.25 per pound. One of Emma's friends was with us and all the kids walked around the patch, grabbing pumpkins of all shapes, colors, and sizes, declaring each one the "perfect pumpkin". I was pushing the pumpkins around in a wheelbarrow, and as the load got heavier and heavier, I had to tell the kids not to walk next to the wheelbarrow because I expected it to tip at some point and I didn't want to crush any young children with tumbling pumpkins. I think I said, "Okay, that's the last one," about ten times, but finally we made it back. It probably shouldn't have been too much of a surprise, then, when the people weighed our wheelbarrow and we had 180 pounds of pumpkins! Sheesh. So, we have a LOT of pumpkins this year. We tried to give away a bunch to Emma's friend, but were still left with a huge amount.Steve carved a cute little one right away, and ever since then Emma has been begging to carve her own pumpkin. I was kind of against it but Steve said he would get some safer tools for her to use. I felt slightly better knowing he wasn't going to be just handing her a big old butcher's knife, but still a little nervous.She worked very intently for about an hour - apparently the little tools are not only safer but slower as well. I only came in the kitchen long enough to take these pictures. I couldn't bring myself to watch her for much longer than that because I expected blood to start gushing from her limbs at any moment.
Emma's pumpkin is the one on the right, and the other two are the pumpkins that Steve carved for Noah and Allie.
We've had these jack-o-lanterns out for two nights now, and they are already pretty deteriorated, thanks to our squirrels. They ate the one Steve carved awhile back, and they are wasting no time with these new ones. We can't remember squirrels eating our pumpkins before, but they are sure into it this year. Almost every time we pull in our driveway, it seems like there is a squirrel gnawing on our pumpkins. Weird.Happy Halloween!

I have recently made three new cooking discoveries about which I am feeling kind of excited. It's very likely that no one else will be as excited as me about these things, but nevertheless, here they are:
1. Steve sometimes eats breakfast, but sometimes not, usually because he is in a hurry to get to work and doesn't have much time. I saw a really great way to make breakfast sandwiches on Pinterest a couple weeks ago, and thought they would be perfect for Steve (and anyone else who wants them) to have for breakfasts.
I used English muffins and bagel thins, but the bagel thins aren't quite as good as the English muffins. I only got them because initially I, for some unknown reason, only got one package of English muffins. When I went back to the store they were out of the whole wheat ones and I couldn't bring myself to by the white ones, so bagels it was. Ah well, live and learn. I also included sauteed spinach, eggs, soy "sausage", and white cheddar cheese. I wrapped and froze them all, and they are easy to thaw in the microwave for a quick breakfast or snack. They ended up being pretty delicious, and I will be making more of these for sure.
2. I have been seeing baked donuts on cooking blogs for awhile, and the idea seems pretty clever. However, I figured that most of the deliciousness of donuts comes from their being fried, so I did not rush out and purchase a donut pan. Eventually I couldn't resist anymore, and I decided that our first batch of donuts should be chocolate with chocolate icing. More "treat" than the donuts I will probably make most of the time, but I wanted the kids to warm up to these non-fried donuts, and also, I had half a carton of buttermilk in the fridge that I needed to use up.
Noah was so excited about making these donuts with me, and we both impatiently waited for Allie to wake up from her nap so we could all eat them together. Unfortunately, even though they were cute, these donuts were NOT good. I guess the buttermilk should have already been thrown out! We had to throw those donuts away, and I was starting to regret my donut pan purchase.
Luckily, I came across another delicious-sounding recipe for cider donuts and this one happened to also be much healthier than the first. These, thank goodness, were a hit! This afternoon we made our second batch of them in three days. Even though we just had them, the kiddos were pretty excited to have them again today - too excited, apparently, to let me take a picture!
If you ever try making donuts, it's a good idea to put the batter in a gallon Ziplock bag with a corner cut out and pipe it into the pans instead of trying to pour it in. I learned that the hard way. We also found out that, when sprinkling powdered sugar on the donuts, you should do it right before you eat them because if you do it on all of them at once, the sugar on the ones you don't eat right away will disappear. Then, of course, your children will insist that you add more powdered sugar before they eat those.3. There is a restaurant that opened up here a few months ago called Unforked. It's like a fast food place but with actual good food. They have this kale salad that is amazingly yummy, and sometimes we will go there mostly to get the kale salad. The other day I looked online to see if I could find that recipe anywhere, and voila! I tried it out at dinner last night, and it wasn't quite as delicious as the one at Unforked, but pretty darn close. I'm going to try to tweak it a little to see if I can get it to be exactly the same, but in any case, I see a lot of kale salad in my family's future!

I am pretty lucky, as far as cooking goes, that Steve and Emma will eat literally anything and Noah and Allie will eat most things. Even if something doesn't turn out very well, I know that Steve and Emma will still eat it, even if they are ("they" meaning Steve) making fun of it the whole time. In particular, I can think of a certain lentil casserole from a few years back that is still brought up around here from time to time. Still, even with his non-pickiness, Steve has always preferred to have meat at a meal rather than not.

Spicy African Peanut Stew served over Jalapeno Cheddar Cornbread

Back on August 13th, Steve and I were having a discussion about how people in America eat so much more meat than anywhere else in the world, and Steve commented that maybe we could stop eating meat for six months, just to see what it's like. Because of his fondness for meat, I totally scoffed at him and said there was no way he would do it. I'm pretty sure that my skepticism encouraged him to do it even more, just to prove that he could. We were going to Waldo Pizza the next afternoon with my family, so we decided we'd still go and have our beloved Roasted Corn and Bacon Pizza there, but after that, no more. We did want to leave the option of fish in our diet, so for the next six months, Steve and I planned to become pescetarians.

Reuben

On our first meat-free day, we went to Blanc Burgers for lunch. I ordered the lentil burger because it's delicious and I order it regularly, but I was still in doubt that Steve would actually stick with it. I never thought I'd see the day when Steve would order a lentil burger, but he did, and now we are roughly seven weeks into it and neither one of us has had a bite of meat.

Broiled Tofu with Mmm Sauce and Veggies

So far, I really don't think it's hard at all and Steve says he is not missing meat, either. I've cooked lots of new things, most of which have really been delicious. I already had several vegetarian cookbooks, but I ordered this one for new ideas, and it's awesome. Really, really awesome. There are a number of things I've made from that book that the kids have asked to bring to school for lunch the next day, which is always a good sign. I wonder if they're the only kids at their school eating tempeh tacos for lunch!

Lentil Shepherd's Pie

We like to eat out quite a bit, and at first we thought that might be tricky, but it's really not at all. Of course, there are always fish options at restaurants, but most places we go have other delicious meat-free options as well. We've been eating Thai food a lot, because you can basically choose from the entire menu and just order tofu as the protein instead of meat or chicken, but that is certainly not a problem because we all love Thai food. We have been invited to a couple picnics/parties where we had to eat before we went, knowing the only options there were going to be hamburgers and hot dogs. Also, some friends invited us over for dinner one night, along with a couple other families, and we worried about feeling awkward if they served meat and we didn't eat any. They knew about our no-meat thing, and sweetly ended up calling us beforehand to make sure it would work for us if they made pasta with shrimp and scallops. Absolutely no issue - perfect!

Tempeh Tacos with Yogi Gracamole (from the Peas book but not online anywhere)

My grandma and my parents (and apparently some of their friends and co-workers!) are wondering what we could possibly be eating, so I've posted some pictures of recent meals to ease their minds. Contrary to what some people think, vegetarians do have other options besides macaroni and cheese and cheese pizza! It's usually getting pretty dark these days by the time we eat, so these pictures are not great, but you can at least get the idea.

Somehow, over the last month or two, the kids have suddenly become involved in many more activities than we have ever had before. I feel like a good chunk of my life these days is spent shuttling them back and forth to school and their various practices and classes. Right now we have Brownies, soccer, dance, and Karate, and next week we will be adding tumbling and Spanish as well! A number of these things are just at our YMCA, which is pretty low key, thank goodness!

Today is Noah's half birthday, so tonight we are going to take him out for ice cream to celebrate. It's hard to believe that tomorrow he will be closer to being five than three, when it seems like it was just yesterday that he was turning four. He is still as sweet as ever, but his interests have definitely changed over the past few months. After years of being a huge Thomas the Train fan, he moved onto a Star Wars obsession, and doesn't give Thomas a second thought now. He won't even wear his Thomas underwear anymore, which makes me a little sad.

Steve bought two lightsabers awhile ago, and he and Noah play with them constantly. Even though he never "wins", Noah never tires of the game. Steve drew this picture of himself and Noah, maybe to give Noah the impression that he is better than he actually is. I'm sure if Noah decided he was tired of the lightsabers, Steve would be pretty disappointed!A couple months ago, Noah saw a Storm Trooper gun at Target and begged and begged to get it. I still don't love the idea of playing with weapons so I told him that he could save up his own money to buy it, thinking there was no chance he'd be able to come up with the $20 price of the gun. He obviously had more faith in himself than I did, because he immediately set out to get $20. We told him that when we go out for ice cream, he could skip the ice cream and we'd give him $2 instead so he did that a few times, plus he did little jobs around the house and looked in all our nooks and crannies for money. One night he found $6 outside of Peach Wave, and another day he found $5 on the floor of Target, so both of those finds helped him quite a bit. We had a random plastic tube hanging around our house and he saved his money in there, calling it (for some unknown but charming reason) his "money carriage".Last week he finally had enough money so we all went to Target, with Noah proudly holding the money carriage. He picked out the gun, brought it to the check-out line, and purchased it all by himself.He has been playing with it a ton since then, and still seems very excited that he finally owns it. Even though I have always been opposed to toy guns, I don't begrudge him this one because he worked so hard for it and it makes him so happy. So far he has been following the rule of "no shooting Mommy", but if that changes at any time in the future, I may quickly decide otherwise!

I am so happy that September is here! Fall is absolutely my most favorite season. I am not the only around here who is excited looking forward to cooler temperatures, though. In the future, I should probably not buy Allie any fall clothes or a winter coat while it is still warm, because then I end up with a little girl who insists on either wearing long sleeves and pants when it is 98 degrees, or wearing a winter coat with nothing else.Allie and Noah started preschool a couple weeks ago and they both seem to love it. It's a four hour day, with Allie going two days a week and Noah going three. I thought Allie might cry the first day at least, but she barely glanced at Steve and me as we walked out the door. When I picked her up, I asked one of her teachers if Allie had been sad at all, and she said, "Not even for a minute!"
Several people have asked me if I felt sad, dropping my baby off at preschool. Although I certainly adore her and love spending time with her, I really wasn't a bit sad. It may be different when she starts kindergarten or something, but for now, the idea of having eight hours every single week all to myself is just too exciting for me to be sad. After more than seven and a half years of doing all our grocery shopping with the kids, I can now finally go grocery shopping all by myself! Huzzah!

My marathon training is going okay. The marathon is just over a month away at this point. Several weeks ago I ran 20 miles, my farthest so far, and it was rough. The last three miles were kind of on the miserable side, and I didn't do much but lay in bed for most of the day after I got back. Ever since then, I have been a little more nervous about the marathon. This weekend I will be going 22 miles, and I am definitely wishing it were already over. I ran a half marathon a couple weeks ago, which I really loved, although that's another thing that is making me more anxious about the marathon. While the half marathon was great, I didn't really want to turn around and run it again right away, you know? Anyway, Steve took this picture of me in the half, right before I crossed the finish line. I am the one in the purple shirt. I finished in two hours, six minutes, and six seconds.

Two days before Allie's birthday, Emma and Noah cooked up a plan to make her some type of present. They came to me to tell me about it, and started with, "Well, first we need you to sew her a dress...". I had to inform them that, while it was certainly a lovely idea, I was probably not going to sew her a dress in the next day, and that their plan should maybe involve more effort on their part, instead of all the effort on my part. Emma asked if they could give Allie a shirt instead, and if she could sew it herself.

My initial feeling was that I didn't trust Emma to use my sewing machine and that it would probably be better if they designed the shirt and I just sewed it myself. I then started to remember when I was a kid, probably just slightly older than Emma, and my grandma let me use her sewing machine all on my own to make whatever I wanted. For a long time, my little brother proudly wore a satin-y, red, sleeveless shirt with no hems that I had sewed for him, and I'm pretty sure the handle of my grandma's garage broom is still sporting a couple "broom covers" that I sewed. One time, my friend Nicki and I spent the night at my grandma's house and stayed up most of the night, sewing "pajamas" for ourselves. I use the term pajamas very loosely, considering that our "patterns" were made by laying on the fabric and tracing around our bodies with a marker. Still, I remember having a lot of fun sewing at my grandma's house, and I think it was awesome that she let me use her sewing machine when no one else trusted me enough to use theirs.Keeping all that in mind, I decided to let Emma sew the shirt herself (albeit with plenty of supervision). I helped her trace one of Allie's other shirts to make a pattern, and then once she had cut out all the pieces, I showed her how to use the sewing machine. With the exception of a small amount of sewing around the arm holes and ironing on the applique, she made the entire shirt by herself.
Allie was so excited when she opened it, and has worn it several times already. One time in particular, she wore it three days in a row, only finally taking it off when she managed to somehow drop a huge glob of guacamole down the inside of it. In the end, I'm glad that I let Emma sew the shirt because it's a cute present regardless, but definitely much more meaningful because she made it herself.

Our computer broke last week, and even though I don't actually sit down at the computer on a daily basis, after about a week, sending emails or browsing the internet exclusively on my phone was starting to get on my nerves. We bought another computer on Friday and set it up last night, but at this point it's mostly worthless to me because it's completely empty of all my bookmarks, songs, pictures, etc. I was backing everything up on an external hard drive semi-regularly, so while most of those things are not lost for good, I don't really know how to get them from the external hard drive into useable form on this new computer.

Last Sunday Allie turned three years old. We had kind of a busy weekend with my parents in town and Steve and I having our first overnight alone together in seven and a half years. Suddenly it was Sunday afternoon and my parents had left and I realized I had no plans for a birthday cake for Allie. We asked her what kind of cake she wanted and she said a Dora cake. Since I'm really not a huge fan of my kids being into "characters", I kind of tried to talk her into something else, but she insisted. And, of course, since it was Allie's birthday, if she wanted a Dora cake, then a Dora cake it would be.

Steve acted like he thought I blew it, like how was I going to come up with a Dora cake at this late hour? Not to worry. During Allie's nap, Emma and I went to Michael's and bought a Dora cake pan. We came home and baked it together, ate dinner while it cooled, and then I decorated it right after we ate. It came together pretty quickly, and even though it is certainly no masterpiece, Allie seemed to love it, which is the most important thing.All week she has been telling random strangers that she is three, and even though I keep hearing it over and over, it's still hard for me to believe. It seems like she was just born. We were so surprised when we found out we were having another baby when Noah was only seven months old, but she has been such a wonderful surprise. Our family really is so much better because she is in it.
Happy birthday, big girl.

Now that we are nearing the end of summer, I thought I'd post an update before it's over for good. Our summer this year has been really delightful. With the kiddos all getting older - Allie will be three next week! - we've settled into a wonderful groove that doesn't involve the things that troubled me during their babyhoods, such as getting them to just take a nap already or toddlers demanding to nurse 24 hours a day. I feel like we have entered a new stage of our lives, and it happens to be pretty awesome.

This is the first summer I've felt comfortable taking the kids to the pool by myself, and we've been going three or four days a week. Emma and Noah have both learned to swim, and Emma has recently perfected the art of jumping off the diving board. I thought I might be tired of the pool by the end of the summer, but nope. I think we are all going to miss it when it closes for the year.

We also joined the YMCA this summer, which has been great. I've attempted to join various community centers in the past, but always had to give up the idea, due to somebody or other crying for me in the childcare. This time around they all like it and often ask to go there even more, even though we already go at least three days a week.

This summer I have also decided to train for the Kansas City marathon, which is in October. I signed up with a running group that does their long runs on various routes around the city every Saturday. Long runs by themselves do not seem that great, but running with this group is a lot of fun. This morning the run was in Lawrence and I was not too keen on getting up and driving an hour to get to Lawrence by 6:00 a.m., but I was also supposed to be running seventeen miles and I didn't want to do that all by myself. The kids and Steve and I all ended up going to Lawrence last night and staying in a cool old hotel for a mini-vacation, and the really great thing was that this morning I only had to walk out of the hotel and down the street to meet up with everybody and run my seventeen miles.

Steve and I had our eighth anniversary last week. We went out to dinner with the kids, but the real celebration is going to come next weekend, when my parents are going to take the kids to a hotel overnight while Steve and I stay at a bed and breakfast on the Plaza. It will be our first night together without the kids since Emma was born. We attempted it once when I was pregnant with Noah, but my parents ended up driving an inconsolable Emma to us at 2:00 in the morning. I hope this time ends up a little better than that!

That's about it for now, because we are off the the Royals game for the night. Go Royals!

Over the weekend we had our Second Annual Girls' Weekend with my dad's side of the family. Last year we all went to Rocheport, but this year all the out-of-towners came to Kansas City and everyone stayed at my brother and sister-in-law's house. We managed to pack a crazy amount of fun into two days and nights. Our weekend included the City Market, pedicures, meals out, a play at the American Heartland Theater, shopping at the Plaza, and of course, plenty of plain old sitting around and chatting.Since I live so close, I came home late both nights to sleep in my own bed and check in with my family before leaving again in the morning. They made the most of my being gone most of the weekend by going plenty of restaurants where I refuse to go, but that they all like, such as Applebee's and Waffle House. Steve also took them to a Royals game, and I think they celebrated my not being there for that by consuming an extraordinary amount of junk!Like last year, all of the ladies were supposed to bring some sort of memento for everyone else to take home. A couple years ago my lovely friend Allison gave me some decorated magnetic clothespins, and I have been using them on my fridge ever since. I've often wished that I had more of them so I figured this would be the perfect opportunity to make some - I could make plenty to give away, but also keep some for myself! They ended up looking pretty cute and we liked them so much that Emma is making more for end-of-the-year teacher gifts.I am so happy that my family started this tradition and I am already looking forward to next year!

Some more random tidbits...

~ Emma and Allie both have had a little trouble, for pretty much their whole lives, growing their hair. Emma has worked her whole life to get long hair, and after more than seven years, with only three trim-type haircuts, this is where she has gotten.A couple weeks ago, out of nowhere, she started saying she wanted to cut it. She kept bringing it up, so we brought her in to Great Clips to get it done. I sort of thought she'd back out at the last minute, but nope.I thought it looked so cute afterward, and she seemed happy with it. Happy, at least, until later that night when we thought she was getting ready for bed. In reality, she was in her room, crying her poor little eyes out. After a lot of reassurance, she finally stopped crying and since then there have been no more tears over the loss of her hair.

~ This past weekend, on Mother's Day, I ran a 5k race - my first race in almost fifteen years. Last fall I spent a few weeks trying to get myself into running again, and at that time I was running around twelve-minute miles. I gave up on the running pretty quickly, and didn't do any sort of working out until January when I started trying to do some sort of exercise video just about every day. When I attempted to run again in March or so, I was amazed that - just because I was in much better shape - I was able to run ten-minute miles. I signed up for the 5k to give myself some motivation and, since I figured I'd keep getting a little faster, I made a personal goal for myself to finish the race in under 28 minutes, which means my mile split times would have had to be around 9:30. I am excited to say that my actual race time ended up being 25:58! There were 448 people in my age group (age 30-35) and I came in 18th, so I was feeling pretty darn proud of myself afterward. I really enjoyed the race, and now I am looking forward to running a 10k in July and then a half marathon in October.

~ Remember how my car A/C was broken? Well, last Wednesday they fixed it (again) and asked me to bring it by in a week so they could check on it. Unfortunately, it didn't even make it a week because by yesterday it wasn't working again. Wait though, it gets worse. Monday night our house A/C stopped working! Consequently, I had no way to escape yesterday's scorching heat. When we went to bed last night it was 90 degrees in our house - blech! Even though I would have liked to avoid these problems all together, they certainly make me appreciate the luxury of having a temperature-controlled environment! I only have to suffer through until A.B. May gets here on Saturday (and my van should be fixed this afternoon), but some people had to go their whole lives with no A/C. I definitely feel for them after these last few days! Yesterday the kids and I spent most of the afternoon at Chik-Fil-A, just to get a little relief from the heat, and I expect that again today we will make an effort to spend as little time as possible in our house.~ This morning we took the kids to a charity breakfast for the Strong City School Fund. When we heard about it, we thought it was a good cause and wanted to go, but didn't know if it would be very kid-friendly. I called the lady in charge and she said we could bring them if we wanted, but I sort of got the idea from her that my kids would likely be the only ones there. We decided to go anyway, hoping for the best. This morning as we walked into the Downtown Marriott, into a sea of adults dressed in business attire, I momentarily regretted my decision. With our three little kids in hand, I felt like we totally stood out. In the end though, the kids really pulled it off. I don't think they annoyed anyone too terribly, and the only two incidents involved Allie's spilling her wine glass of orange juice and then later peeing on her dress a little when Steve took her to the bathroom. All in all, not too bad!