Fall Festival

Yesterday, Maisie's new school had its annual Fall Festival. It was so fun!

There was a pumpkin sale - as you can see, they had huge and beautiful pumpkins. There were also some really beautiful heirloom pumpkins - some were white, others were green. So cool! Maisie picked out a small enough pumpkin that she could carry it. Very cute.

You can also see that Maisie got her face painted, too. I loved that the elementary school children were doing the face painting for the younger children.

Gramma, Auntie Laura, and Dylan came to the fall festival too!

Dylan and Maisie had fun playing, getting their faces painted, and generally just enjoying being outside on a crisp fall day. I was glad that Gramma and Auntie Laura got to see Maisie's school, and meet her awesome teacher. They even got to peek into her classroom!

All in all, it was a really fun way to spend the afternoon - playing outside, and getting to know the people in our new school community!

And of course, Ella came along for the ride!

Tomato sauce

My canning adventures continued today while the girls took their afternoon naps. We'd built up a backlog of tomatoes from the past few weeks' CSA deliveries, so I decided to make and can some tomato sauce.

First I blanched and peeled the tomatoes.

This was kind of gross, because they were somewhat slimy underneath their skins. But also fun, because they were somewhat slimy! And look, naked tomatoes! I was surprised at just how easily the skins came right off. I had considered skipping this step and pureeing them with a food mill, which would keep the skins out, but I'm glad I did it this way... much easier.

Then, I cored, seeded and chopped them.

At this point I started to get a little concerned. I thought I had sooooo many tomatoes when they were rolling around in my fridge. But suddenly, hmmm... not so much.

Next, I threw them in a pot and started cooking.

As they cooked I mashed them up with a potato masher. I also had garlic, onion, and green pepper in there, along with the tomato and spices, even though the recipe in my canning book called for carrot instead of green pepper. This was kind of scary to me, because my canning book warned me that if I deviated from their recipe even one little bit, my lovingly crafted tomato sauce will kill my family with botulism!!!!

So even though the University of Minnesota Extension said I don't have to (because I'm using locally grown tomatoes, and my sauce is at least 3/4 tomato), I added 1 Tbsp of lemon juice to each jar. Just to be on the safe side.

After the filled jars spent 35 minutes in boiling water, the canning was finally done! All that effort yielded me...

TWO PINTS of sauce. You may be thinking to yourself, gosh that seems like a lot of work for just two pints of tomato sauce! And yes, I would have to agree with that. I now get why people do these kind of things in giant batches, and why my recipes tend to call for 10 lbs of tomatoes. I don't think it would've been that much more work to do 5x as much sauce. So, lesson learned... but the two pints do make a nice addition to the growing collection of canned food down in the basement!

Dylan's birthday

Still catching up on the backlog... I suppose it would help if we posted more than once a week! Well, it turns out that life with two kids is pretty busy, which I suppose is not news to most of you! So, we're doing our best to keep up with the blog. :)

Dylan turned 6 about a week ago! Auntie Laura had a really fun party for his birthday.

Ella, of course, found the whole thing to be a total snoozer.

But don't let Ella's reaction fool you! The rest of us had fun and nobody else fell asleep even once.

It was a beautiful day, so the kids all had fun playing outside... and there were a LOT of kids there!

As it turns out, between family, friends and neighbors, Dylan has a lot of friends. There weren't even any of his school friends there! (He started kindergarten this year, which is kind of unbelieveable to me. KINDERGARTEN. I still remember the first time he peed on me when I was changing his diaper!)

He got a lot of great presents from generous friends and family!

Maisie wanted to help him open them, but he didn't really need her help, as it turns out.

Finally, of course - birthday cake!

At Dylan's request, the cake had one or two of the trick candles that re-light themselves after you blow them out. But he actually got them all the way out the first time, and they didn't relight. He was bummed about it! But only briefly. Because hey, cake!

Yo Gabba Gabba!

I know I've mentioned one of Maisie's favorite shows, Yo Gabba Gabba, on here a few times. For those who aren't familiar, it's a music-based kids show. Every show teaches a different lesson, such as "making new friends can be scary but is worth it," "being different is what makes us all special," and "don't bite your friends." Each show also has plenty of music, and the main character, DJ Lance Rock, frequently reminds us that "Singing and dancing to music is awesome!"

So, last weekend Yo Gabba Gabba was appearing live at the Target Children's Book Festival! We had to go.

DJ Lance Rock was there!


So was Brobee!


Maisie danced and danced.



Dylan thought the music was too loud!

(He did have fun, and danced a lot too! But I thought this picture was too funny to keep to myself.)

Applesauce

I've recently become intrigued by canning, of all things. We got an abundance of tomatoes in our CSA delivery, and my friend Anne showed me how to can them. I was hooked! Next I wanted to try applesauce.

So on Sunday, Maisie and I went to the farmers market and found a guy selling apples with a big sign that said "ask me questions - I grow everything I sell." Perfect! So at the farmer's recommendation, we bought a 5 gallon bucket of Cortland apples. He said they were tart and would make great sauce, and a lot of it.

That apple farmer was right!

I used maybe a quarter of the apples - I didn't want to do them all at once as I was short on jars (and time) - and made 4.5 pints of yummy applesauce! I didn't even have to add any sugar - just some cinnamon.

So now we have 4 pints of applesauce sitting in storage in the basement next to the tomatoes I put up with Anne's help, and more apples left to sauce up this week, or weekend, whenever we find the time to peel them all.

And as for that other 1/2 pint - Maisie's already eaten it!

First day of school

Last Tuesday was not only my birthday, it was Maisie's first day of preschool.

She looks a little apprehensive, but she did great. She really loves her teachers and her classmates, and has a lot of fun at school. She went right down the hall without looking back, and certainly with no tears.

I mean, at least no tears on her part... I was another story!

now yer bloggie belong to me

State Fair!

This morning, Maisie and I went to the State Fair!

I've only been a handful of times and it wasn't something I ever really loved, but I thought Maisie would enjoy it and it would be fun to see with her. And it was!

The first fun thing we did was to park at the new football stadium, on the U of M campus, for the free park & ride. Maisie thought the bus was great! She was really into the idea of a bus that has a potty in it. (by the way, have I mentioned that Maisie is almost completely potty trained now? Nights and naps are not dry yet, but that's fine. Uh-oh, hope this was not jinxing it.)

Anyway: at the fair, we went on a bunch of rides.

We went on this beautiful carousel twice! We also went down the Giant Slide twice, and through Ye Olde Mill twice, which is this weird tunnel of love-type ride I guess? You get in a little boat together, and ride through this pitch-black tunnel that has like four or five dioramas with painted plywood cutout figures? I have never seen anything like it. It's super weird but people love it, Maisie included!

Maisie has a bee painted on her left cheek here. She got that done at a display by beekeepers. This lovely young woman was painting kids' faces. When Maisie got up to the front of the line, the woman asked her what she wanted on her face. Maisie said, without hesitating, "a spider!!" The woman said, "Oh, I can only do a bee, a butterfly, or a flower." So Maisie went with the bee. The woman looked at me like, a SPIDER?? That's my girl!

One thing people always talk about regarding the State Fair is the food.

Maisie and I didn't have anything crazy - no chocolate covered bacon, deep fried candy bars, or alligator on a stick for us. We stuck with the basics, and had walleye for lunch, followed by a huge strawberry ice cream cone!

We also went through some of the animal barns, and saw horses, rabbits, sheep, poultry, and cows, as well as the new babies in the Miracle of Birth center - we got to pet a one-day-old lamb!

All told, we were at the fair for about three hours. After all that, Maisie was exhausted. When we got back to the car, she said "I'm really sleepy, Mama. I sleep in my carseat!" And she did.

I have two girls.

These pics are clearly pre-haircut, you can see those long unruly curly locks!

Maisie loves to hold Ella.

She routinely demands, "I want to hold my sister!" It's super cute, and you can see she clearly enjoys it - how could we say no? Although Ella seems a little unsure about the whole business. Don't worry baby, we're closely supervising!

Another thing Maisie likes is to note that "you got two girls, Mama." (although she says "girls" more like "gorls," it's cute.) I do have two gorls! And Daddy has three.

Lucky daddy!

Haircut

You may have noticed in recent pictures that Maisie's hair has been getting kind of long and unruly. To be honest, it got long enough that it was getting to be a real pain... it would get in her food and in her projects - paint, paper maiche, etc. - and would get horrible tangles that took forever to comb out.

Enough is enough, so on Saturday we went to Kids Hair to get a haircut.

You may be able to tell that Maisie had mixed feelings about the whole experience. She was into it initially, but got really skeptical up on that chair! Fortunately the people there are real pros, and kept Maisie distracted enough through the whole process that she didn't cry once... unlike our friends Chuck and Christy's little boy Clark, who was coincidentally getting a haircut at the same time. Poor Clark howled through his whole haircut! At least they used clippers, so it was fast.

Interestingly, the Highland Park Kids Hair is apparently at the center of my world. Not only did we run into Chuck, Christy and Clark there, but my mom and Dylan saw my car in the lot and stopped in to say hi!

The nine of us went and had lunch at the Chatterbox around the corner, which was great! Then when we were leaving, we ran into my friends Kate and Ry4an with their little girl Sasha, who was also getting a cut. It was kind of ridiculous. But at least now I know where everyone hangs out on Saturday mornings... Kids Hair!

Once again, Ella was bored by the whole process and slept through just about everything. One day it'll be you up on that chair, little girl! Then we'll see who's bored by Kids Hair.


The finished product.
No tears, a good haircut, and she even got a sucker at the end of the process... we'll definitely be back!

And now it's time to dance!

We realized that not everyone has seen Maisie's lovely dance moves. Still pictures just don't do her justice. So, are you ready... yeah! Let's do it, break it down!



(That's a Yo Gabba Gabba reference for those of you without little kids.)

A wedding!

This weekend, we went to the wedding of my coworker Jeff and his lovely bride Elisha.

Maisie was very taken by the whole thing. Well, she actually thought the ceremony was a little boring. But she really loved the reception! There were people, there was cake, there were "princesses" (bride and bridesmaids). Elisha let Maisie touch her dress, and showed her all the sparkly beaded parts on the bodice, which Maisie thought was pretty special!

We had a delicious dinner, and then we all got to dance! In case you weren't aware, Maisie loves to dance.


Check out Maisie's beautiful party dress... she picked it out herself! The two of us went shopping together a few weeks ago for our dresses for the wedding. I think she did a pretty good job choosing a beautiful and appropriate dress for the occasion!

These are just a few shots of Maisie's awesome dance moves! She had so much fun dancing with me and her daddy, and everyone else there. She learned to do the Chicken Dance and the Hokey Pokey, so now she's ready for all future wedding dances.

Ella, of course, slept through the majority of the festivities. She woke up a few times, and my baby-loving coworkers were happy to play "pass the baby" so that I could eat my dinner with two hands, while Aaron chased Maisie around!

So after all that, Maisie told us that she wants to get married. I suspect she really just wants to have a wedding, which of course is not the same thing! We told her that when she gets married, she can wear a sparkly white dress and have a special dance with her daddy, too... but not until she's all grown up. There's no hurry!

Home and out

Now that Maisie's not in daycare it's a challenge trying to find activities to keep her happy and busy and social. We've visited the MN Children's Museum a couple times in the last two weeks.

Maisie painting her face (I'm NOT allowed to help).

Maisie trying on different career clothes (pith helmet and janitor shirt).

How does Ella deal with all of this excitement? The same way she handles all Maisie's and my screaming and racing around at home.

Sleep.

Art Fair

This afternoon, we went to the Powderhorn Park Art Fair! Friends of ours suggested going to the Uptown Art Fair, but Powderhorn is less crowded, and walking distance from our house. So we said no thanks! to Uptown.

It was a beautiful day for it! The walk was a little long for Maisie, but she got through with the promise of ice cream once we got there. She got strawberry cheesecake ice cream from a vendor who claimed to be the "Midwest Ice Cream Specialist" or some such thing... it was really good ice cream, anyway. We also got some delicious iced jasmine tea and Maisie's first cream cheese wontons from Pham's, a noodle shop at the Midtown Global Market that had a booth at the fair.

We didn't just buy food! Maisie got a handmade mermaid doll, made by a Hmong woman who was selling her work for ridiculously cheap prices.

The walk back was a little far for Maisie, so she rode on her daddy's shoulders most of the way. You can see her mermaid, with her beautiful pink hair hanging down, in Maisie's hand in this picture.

(BTW, you all know that if you click on a picture, it'll come up larger, right? Just making sure... this pic is kind of dark in the small version, but looks much better when enlarged. Just so you know!)

Ella slept through the whole thing... :)

Adventures

We've had a lot of changes since our last post!

I started back at work on Monday, and Aaron's now a stay-at-home dad. So far it's been going really well for all four of us. I'm happy to be back at work (really!), and Aaron, Maisie, and Ella are enjoying their time together.

Aaron plans things for them to do, so they've been getting out of the house every day on "adventures," even if just to go chase pigeons at the park. This was Monday... Maisie was really disappointed that she wasn't able to catch any of the pigeons.

They've also been keeping busy at home, working on art (and other skills, too). Every day I come home to many beautiful watercolor paintings!

Today they went to the Minneapolis Institute of Art - Maisie was particularly impressed by the statutes. So maybe tomorrow, instead of watercolors, I'll come home to some beautiful play-doh sculpture!

Ella's been keeping up with Aaron and Maisie, or at least has been going along for the (stroller) ride. She's doing great - gaining weight, holding her head up so strong, and smiling an adorable little smile. She already seems so big! It's really astounding, how fast they grow.

Just, you know, watch your fingers around her.

Maisie continues to be a fantastic older sister. She's gotten the hang of giving Ella a bottle, and loves to do so. She's a great helper!

Visiting (great-)grandparents

I'm almost at the end of my maternity leave. Time goes so fast... So last weekend, we decided to head down to Iowa so that Ella could meet her great-grandparents for the first time.

We went to Ames on Friday and stayed with Grandma Jo. Then we headed out to Vail, IA, where Great Grandma and Grandpa live, on Saturday. They got to meet Ella, and to see Maisie again - it's been a while! We had a really lovely visit with them.

Maisie enjoyed her visit to Vail, too. Aaron's cousin Rob was visiting at the same time with his family, including his daughter Elise, who's just a little older than Maisie is.

Maisie had so much fun playing with Elise at Grandma & Grandpa's house! And we were happy to learn that Rob, Trish, and their family are moving back to the Twin Cities. So, hopefully this was just the first of many play dates for Maisie and Elise!

I love a parade

Last weekend was the Highland Park neighborhood festival. Saturday morning there was a children's parade with a costume contest, so we had to go!


When Grandma Liisa first asked Maisie how she wanted to dress up, she said "a SHARK!!" But Grandma was able to redirect her to "flower princess." She helped Maisie decorate her doll Becky's stroller, and made Becky a princess skirt. Pretty cute, eh?

Maisie wasn't sure about walking in the parade, so I got to walk with her.

Disappointingly, she didn't win a prize in her age category (4 & under)... we were robbed!

Dylan, however, won 3rd prize in the 5 & up group for his excellent rocket.

He was so excited to win! Good job Grandma Liisa! And he shared his prize candy with Maisie, so she got over her loss pretty quickly.

(Ella slept through the whole thing.)

Sisters

With a little help, Maisie can hold Ella. It's one of her favorite things to do! She asks to hold her "stisser" a couple of times a day. She'll also say, "Look at me, baby Ella!!" as she shows off a new dance step or fancy twirl.

It makes me so happy to see that Maisie has adapted so well to being a big sister! I love watching her interact with Ella, and I look forward to seeing their relationship grow.