Our Family Blog: Fall is Here!

...and we are loving it.

That tasty treat would be a caramel apple, made by Tim. Tim is so creative. I love him so much. (Is that too mushy for a blog??) I am so NOT creative, and he makes my life way more beautiful, interesting and TASTY.

What inspired this beautiful apple, you wonder? Well, I'd be pleased to tell you.

Pretty much anytime I ask Tim what he wants for lunch/dinner, he says, "something GOOD." Poor Tim. I want something EASY. Not too long ago, after church, we were hunting for something GOOD to eat for lunch at home. If I remember right, we went for something EASY in the end...grilled cheese. Hmmm... Lunch was lacking something. Fruit? I suggested that we had a couple of apples, and we could make some kind of dip...caramel, or cream cheese... (I'm still thinking EASY at this point.) Well, with Tim in charge, the apples will need to be GOOD. Thus: Caramel apples with white chocolate drizzled on top. They were SO DELICIOUS.

In case you are inspired by GOOD things, here's how we made them:

We washed 2 apples (of course).
We melted 10-15 unwrapped Brach's Caramels and 2T of water in a bowl in the microwave.
We spooned the caramel over the apples, and set them on waxed paper on a plate in the fridge while we ate lunch. (Really, they didn't peel off the paper at all...perhaps there's a better way?)
After lunch, we melted Almond Bark (again in the micro) and spooned it into a baggie.
After cutting a little bit of the corner off, we squeezed the bark onto our cooled apples.
We pulled the apples off the paper, and cut them into slices with a big knife.
We ATE them, very happily. :)

In other fall news...I have more pictures of tree climbing. The pictures I took just didn't do the trick for showing how high our little rascals were. Tim took these, and this is the first I have seen how high up Trevor was. It's a little shocking...

In the first one, you can barely see Trevor in the center of the picture:

The second one is a little easier. Try to remember where int he tree he is, so you can find him in the 3rd picture:

Oh my goodness...was he ever high. I'm not sure what I think about that. I am keenly aware of my lack of understanding of how to raise boys.

Soccer is also Fallish, so here are some more soccer pictures...

This is from Trevor's last game. He is 2nd from the right. Look how small he is compared to the others!

He played really well that game.

Here's a couple from an older game:

And William's last game...he got to play Goalie 2nd half:

In the SOUTH, blowing and raking PINESTRAW is Fallish...

...and lots more fun to do when the kids help:

And, another Fallish thing is, of course, hatching Triops...
What? You haven't heard of that? Well, you are missing out!

Here is our set-up.

We bought a kit of Triops eggs while in Branson this year. The kids have been begging since March to hatch their eggs. Well, tis the season.

If you are curious, you can go here to see a page about Triops.

We had to make sure the water was the right temp before we started, hence the heating lamp. Then we added our egg mixture:

All that debris floating in the water came with the eggs. After 1 day, they hatched. I think you can actually see one triop floating in the water in that last picture. It is a light brown speck, floating in the middle of an open area, just below the "GLAD" sign on the bottom of the container.

So, now, just 1 week later, we have 6 baby triops swimming like crazy in our bowl.

Yes, in the dirty water, you can see one of them...he looks a little like a horseshoe crab. We are having a blast with them.

We'll keep you posted on their growth, of course!

Fall is also time for CAMPING.
We are getting camping fever...which can sometimes be alleviated just by setting up a tent.

We are actually psyching ourselves up to go camping soon. Time will tell what we wind up doing, I guess.

Lastly, here's a barrage of old pictures I came across from the last few months:

Crazy: