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Chores and Pumpkins

It seems that every time we go to the Children's Museum Meadow gets a cold. I let her have orange juice with her breakfast. 

Ever since I taught Meadow how to use a piggy bank we give her all our coins so she can add them in.

This may be another reason why she gets colds.

As we were heading out to go to the Farmers Market one of the neighbor kids spotted us and asked if he could come along. 

He had never been here before and was surprised that it was an outdoor market.

He assumed it was in a big building like a grocery store.

He hung around with us for most of the day.

His family is moving soon. This may be one of the last chances to hang with us.

I made a tandoori roast turkey over the past few days and we ate leftovers like it was an Indian Thanksgiving.

The neighbor boy noticed the crock so I opened it up. Our sauerkraut was ready!


We were all excited for all the possibilities until Brooke told me I had to can the kraut.

While Meadow napped I did some yard work. Scott was inside trying to figure out how canning works.

Eventually we switched roles. I was getting frustrated trying to plant flower bulbs in our rocky soil and Scott didn't quite understand all the steps to canning.

I got exactly this far.

We got six jars worth (one wasn't full enough to can) all for only 3 dollars of cabbage. 

We were supposed to carve pumpkins with Tyler and Emma. Since Cevonne and Jose moved to Texas we had to find someone else to carve with. Meadow took a long nap and canning the sauerkraut took too long so they started without us.

We stayed home and made dinner instead with the intent of carving pumpkins.

I had Meadow go first. I taped on a face and was going to have her paint the pumpkin. 

She was totally not into it. She wanted to finger paint instead so I kept putting the pumpkin in front of her and every time she pushed it away more paint go on it. 

Eventually we had leftover turkey and wild rice soup. It was good.

After Meadow was done with painting I filled in some areas for her.

The next day we worked on ours. 

It was sad to not be able to share this time with Cevonne and JT.

I got to carve the pumpkin I grew. When I went to get it out of the garden there was a bunch of bugs and slugs on it. I was afraid they had gotten into the pumpkin.

Meadow had fun playing with the guts.

My pumpkin was easy enough to gut. Everything was looking up with a great start via the nose.

My pumpkin was a bit oblong, but I think this did it justice.

Not bad this year.

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