What our lives were full of in 2011

Or...
Some stuff I may or may not have blogged about in 2011

Parker earned his Bobcat and Wolf badge and has now moved onto Bear!  

Dino goodies--Mimi is still as Dinosaur-obsessed as ever.  

Carnivore {Meat-eating} Dinosaur= gummy bears and Swedish fish

Herbivore {Plant-eating}Dinosaur=Carrot and Celery sticks

AND

Sweetivore {Candy-eating}Dinosaur= CANDY

(another idea from the internet)

Bread

I don't bake as much as I should, but when I do, they can't wait for it!   

Drilling holes in the house.  Kind-a freaky.  But very helpful to make our dryer work better. 

Getting Yoda off the bottle.  

Lots of gardening.  ahh... I almost can't wait :)

Studying

Greg studied the entire year, from January until November.  Solid.  When he wasn't studying for an exam, he was working on a smaller internet class-thingy (something that took about 50 hours to complete, and he did 2 of them in less then 2 months.  That's on top of working and being a full-time dad). He passed both of those--wahoo!!! 

Goodbye Soccer. 

No one was having fun, and that is supposed to be the point. So we have quit for now.  The only thing I'll miss is how crazy cute Mimi was in her little shin guards and cleats.  

So many fevers I lost count

Hiring someone to do elective surgery on the house. 

 I got this sweet bike trailer so Yoda could join us. 

Growing grapes=snacking on grapes, making grape jelly, and making grapevine wreaths.  

Carving out a craft/sewing area for myself.  It's not perfect, but it's SO nice.  (more pictures on their way.)

All that doesn't even include all the family and friends that we visited or who visited us--that could be a complete other blog post.  

I've given up on resolutions for me.  I'm just working on small, reachable, daily goals for now.  Life is too messy (literally and figuratively) to add in any more guilt.  2011 was interesting--here's to hoping that 2012 is awesome, with no ER visits :) 

A Plethera of Peaches

What we did with a bushel of peaches:
Bottled Peaches
Peach Crisp
Fresh Peach Bee Hives-The Kiddos favorite
Pork Chops with Peaches
Peach Syrup for Pancakes
Peach Curried Turkey Burgers-Greg's favorite
Peach Butter
Plain
Chicken with Peaches
Watching Baby DEVOUR them-my favorite

strawberry jam

First- pick the berries, preferably in the pouring rain, and possibly with thunder and lightning in the distance.
Second- fall asleep on the way home, or at least pretend, as Indiana is doing here.
Next- crush the berries, wear your shirt on backwards for luck, as Mimi is doing here.
Don't forget to wash your hands.
Indiana:"Dad, what's wrong with your hands?! Are you bleeding?"
Mimi:"hmmm" *lick*
Greg:"Hey, don't lick my hands!"

Last-IF you have any energy left, go ahead and can some strawberry jam. Otherwise freeze them all in your GIGANTIC empty freezer in the basement.

Concord Grapes

Notice how they both use their left hands? Hmmm...


There is a grape vine in our back yard. So for family home evening this week we picked grape for jelly. They really enjoyed helping- one grape at a time...

There is a book called Goodnight Gorilla. It's a picture book consisting mostly of a zoo keeper saying goodnight to his animals and lots of pages with no words at all. On one wordless page, Greg improvises what a character in the book would say (in Spanish, no less) when she sees her bedroom full of zoo animals. "Que Paso!..." and he goes on.

I don't say this, of course, I don't know Spanish, nor what it is that Greg says at that part. But the other night while I was reading this book to Mimi and Superman was in the room, when I came to and passed that page with out saying that phrase in Spanish, Superman said:"It's 'Que Paso' you know!"