Halloween

Since fall is full upon us and winter approaches, we sent Olaf into the tree to pick all the apples. we got about 25 gallons, 1/3 really nice and 2/3 not quite so nice thanks to the coddling moths. They are great eating and cooking apples, like a granny smith. I'm mourning the fact that my lovely apple peeling machine is somewhere in storage. 

Julia was a huge fan of her little "muh-min," and after I carved it for her she carried it around for hours.  

Olaf was also a huge fan of pumpkin carving.

Not only a fan of pumpkins, Olaf is a fan of decorating to the 9's for Halloween. 

He created quite a graveyard in the future garden bed and put fake cobwebs on every surface possible.  Every day he came home with a new idea for further decorating, so we are all breathing a sigh of relief that the event is over.  Speaking of the future garden bed, Mom and I got a small rototiller at a garage sale, and so I am hopeful that we will be able to work the compacted clay soil after all! A shovel just isn't getting us far. 

Check out the Hello Kitty undies! Julia is a huge fan of the underwear I bought her the other day. She carried all 7 pairs around the entire first day and while she has since reduced the quantity carried to one or two pairs, she is often found trying to figure out how to put on multiple pairs at once. Potty training is going quite well, I think. For the past 5 days, she has gone tee-tee in the potty first thing in the morning. Occasionally she goes later in the day too. We have some accidents and I put her in a diaper to go out and to bed still, but she gets the idea, has the language down and today she told me "poopies" and went and did it, followed by another tee-tee! Forgive my detail, but I am super proud of her!

October

Julia and I have been making friends! We met Lisa and her daughter Aila at the library's story hour and hit it off. She's in town for a couple months too, while her husband does some training, so we don't feel guilty getting to know each other as we're both temporaries! Her daughter is two, so she and Julia (now 18 months) get along quite well. We took them to the town's children's museum last week, and they really loved it. 

Aila and Julia check out the cockpit of a plane

future pilots

and firewomen

we also took them to Jungle Gym

Julia was pretty into the bin of shakers

In craftyland, I turned a moth eaten merino sweater  into shorts and a hat! The tulips cover up moth holes.
The hat is just a sleeve, cut off and hemmed, and knotted at the cuff.  I made one for Aila too. 

 

I also made a little fabric memory game for Julia (when she gets to that point) 

Even though fall is heavy upon us, there are crocuses blooming out in the yard!

Julia having quality uncle time. 

Julia got impatient waiting for her bath and climbed in clothes, shoes, book and all. 

I took Julia and Olaf to a pumpkin patch!

Olaf's still posing but Julia has lost interest in smiling. 

Julia was quite pleased with mittens

but it only took her two minutes to master taking them off!

I sewed Julia wings!

Perhaps for halloween, or perhaps just for dress-up.

I used this tutorial

Halloween

10/30 to 11/5
thus endeth a 8 day internet outage!

The school hosted a halloween party on saturday for the kids and families. Dave and I were bumblebees, and Julia was our flower. Good thing halloween wasn't any later or Julia wouldn't have fit in her costume! The kids got to play all sorts of games like musical chairs, relay races, sack hop, fish tank, bean bag toss, tug of war, and there was a cake walk, jello eating contest and pizza and treats for sale. I ran the face painting booth that also dabbled in pirate themed temporary tattoos. very popular, those.

how fast can you suck jello through a straw?

the get dressed-get undressed relay race

Trick or treating happened sunday night, and was actually kind of anticlimactic, as there were only about 5 kids to come by. Some had gone to Anchorage, and some were stuck across the river. Until the ice freezes solid enough to drive on, three of the school kids are stuck on the other side. We did take Julia to a couple houses, though she was pretty indifferent about it. 

the trick or treaters, traveling bush alaska style
(meaning a kid as young as 7 is often driving
other kids around on the 4 wheeler or snowmobile.) 

Julia seemed curious about the candy

other news:
Julia's getting another tooth, right next to the first one. I couldn't believe it. Six days apart!
She's also learned to clap, and it is the first thing she does now when she wakes up. She sits up and then claps, then goes about making sure I'm good and awake.

the teeth

Dave is going to teacher inservice in another village. He'll be gone from wednesday afternoon to saturday evening, so Julia and I are holding down the fort. I borrowed a sewing machine for a few days, so I'm mending and working on some small projects. Julia's hand-me-down snowsuit was missing one of the foot covers, so I knitted some out of red yarn, felted them and sewed them on. Pretty snazzy, I thought, but not 10 minutes after I finished sewing them on, I got word that the original missing bootie had been found. Sigh.

the booties

Julia got a PC shot and I got a flu shot at the town clinic. There's nobody living in the village to work the clinic, but maybe twice per year a traveling nurse will come to town for a few days.

the clinic

I've also been trying a new way of making bread from the cookbook My Bread by Jim Lahey. It's a simple dough that is barely combined, then left to rise slowly at room temperature for 18 hours. The slow fermentation develops the gluten that is a result of kneading in most bread recipes. After the 18 hours, the bread is shaped into a round ball and left to rise on a floured tea towel for 1-2 hours. Meanwhile you heat a heavy dutch oven style pot in the oven at 475 for 30 minutes. You flip the risen loaf into the hot pan, put the lid on and bake it for 30 minutes covered, and 15-30 minutes uncovered. I'm pretty pleased with the results. The bread is crusty, full of bread flavor, and the texture is chewy, with nice holes throughout.

Seven Months

Oct 29
This is the first month that I've missed recognizing Julia's month birthday. She turned 7 months old on october 22nd, and I realized it 4 days later when Dave commented on the change. She's getting much more stable while standing, holding on to the chair or bookshelf, and she's learning to walk along the edge of the couch. She can even navigate over my feet to get around me when I'm sitting on it.

You can see just a sliver of tooth right above my fingernail

Last night and the night before brought several more inches of snow.

The ice is stretching farther and farther out from shore

sunrise, 9 30 am

Today the kids were carving pumpkins in school, as part of a math lesson. Along with carving, they were measuring, weighing, counting seeds, collecting data, ect. Julia had her own tiny pumpkin to gnaw.

Rashaun, Sam, Dave and Miguel taking dimensions

Chelsea, Mattie and Alfreda scooping innards to be weighed

Tatiana, Honey and Angela, carving a face

Honey, with the finished result

Happy Almost Halloween