Fall in all God's glory

 

I love fall.  I love the colors. I love the weather. I love the fresh air. I love the fact that the black flies are gone!  

A friend of mine, Sandra, my granddaughter and I were able to get out for a walk yesterday.  We went to the Cricenti's Bog and walked out through their trails.  I'm so out of shape.  My knees were so bad last evening.  I'm not getting any younger, that's for sure.  Haahaa.  

This photo of my granddaughter walking alone in front of us was the last time she walked without me holding the hood of her jacket.  LOL  This girl is fast!  She took off running down the board walk.  I'm a grandma at 53 and Sandra is 72.  We can't chase her down.  I finally got her stopped and told her we had to go a different direction.  When she got back to me I grabbed a hold of the hood and didn't let go till we were back to the car.  Phew.

         Munchkin loves looking at mushrooms and there were a lot of them to be investigated.

The fluffy white flowers out there in the bog are called Tawny Cottongrass. I wish I had a better photo of them. They look kind of like a frazzled cotton ball.

You have to stay on the board walk for some of the wet spots are extremely deep.  Of course Munchkin wanted to splash in all the "puddles".  There's one spot with a water hole that has a stick in it that you can pull up and push down in the hole.  The stick is over 6 feet long and when pushing down you can't reach the bottom.

                                                It was such a gorgeous day to be out walking.

This is a purple pitcher plant, trumpet pitcher. These are carnivorous!  The centers are filled with a liquid, partial rain water I'm sure. The bugs are in big trouble when they land inside. 

                                                     I love taking close up photos of objects.  

I am so happy to have this little blue van on the road, registered and insured.  I have been driving the big white van every day since April.  It's our camper van and was never meant to be my DAILY driver but then the transmission went in my other van.  Don't get me wrong, I am very blessed to have that van to drive.  It sure beat walking everywhere!  Munchkin was at the point she would cry if we had to go anywhere in it.  She would get car sick riding in it.  

Sad part is that due to the weather, finance and health Kileyanne and I weren't able to go camping once this summer.  Lord willing next year we'll get to go.  

This is a great fall recipe that my family loves.  It has 5 ingredients but I have never used the stick of butter that it calls for.  And I use milk with the soup and not wine. 

Chicken, soup, milk,  stuffing and Swiss cheese.  It is so easy and very tasty.  The last time I made it I diced the chicken up into about 1 inch pieces.  

https://blessyourheartichoke.com/swiss-chicken-casserole/

 

I am excited that Kileyanne will be home-schooling again.  We home-schooled for three years through C and then she went back part way through 6th grade.  She'll end public school next month at the end of 1st quarter. I really enjoy having her home during the days and we had such a great time home-schooling.  She went back because she missed her friends but I guess she doesn't miss all the drama that goes with those friends.

We use A.C.E curriculum.  It's a faith based study.  A go at your own pace study.  

 

Well, I leave you here with a photo of Riot.  A 3 year old.  One of my daughter's horses. 

 

Tickle Tickle

The fall days are crisp and refreshing.  I try to take advantage of being outside some of the day.  This day my granddaughter picked up a hand full of chicken feathers from our yard and decided to tickle tickle the van.  She is so cute.  What a sense of humor this girl has for a 2 year old.  She is such a blessing.

Our foliage is just starting here in New Hampshire.  I heard a report that due to all the rain we had this summer, we may not have a very good foliage this fall.  This is one of my favorite times of year.  God's beauty abounds more and more.  The colors are usually so vibrant.  The air clean.  I love day trips in the fall with my camera in hand.  I was supposed to go today with a friend for a day trip but it is supposed to rain this afternoon so we'll just do some errands...with the camera in tote just in case! 
 

                                                    Colors are not very vibrant as of yet. 

My husband, of 34 years, took me away for my birthday last weekend. He told me to choose which direction we were to go.  Of course I chose the ocean!  Oh I do love the ocean!  Between schedules and the bad weather and lots of colds in the house, my partner in crime, Sandra, and I have not been able to get to the ocean yet.  So I JUMPED at the chance to go.  It's nice to go during the off season so there aren't many people there.  

Then there was the job of trying to figure out which hotel to stay at.  There were quite a few choices but I knew it had to be on the beach not off on some side street.  So this is the view from our room...

Hubby got a kick out of having his truck valet parked.  For some reason all vehicles had to be valet parked.  We took his work truck so we didn't have to take my camper van...long story there. 

Hampton Beach.  Look at that beach.  NO people.  There was a small glass balcony out the sliding door.  I have to admit, I am deathly afraid of heights so I could only last a minute or two out there.  I did better standing in the room looking out the open door.  

I even set the alarm for 6:00 am in hopes to get a photo of the sunrise.  I made it to the beach on time but it was just too cloudy for the sunrise. This was the best I could get.  Oh but it was still perfect.  To be on the beach early in the morning with very few people there and to sit and talk with the Lord is a perfect way to start the day.  God is good.

And what is a perfect way to end a perfect night away at the ocean?  Seafood of course!  Can't go to the ocean with out having seafood! 

A delicious lobster roll and a cup of clam chowder.  Oh my it was yummy.  Hubby had native shrimp. 

 Two pumpkins growing in my garden.  It has been such a bad year for our gardens.  I do still have a ton of GREEN tomatoes that I am praying will ripen.  Even if they do ripen I'm not sure I'll get any.  My granddaughter loves to eat them freshly picked. 

Well I need to get going.  Have to go pick up Sandra and head out for a little cruise.  See what we can find to do till I have to pick my granddaughter up from daycare.  (the house is so quiet right now).

I leave you with this photo.  This is me following my dad as he tills the garden.  I was looking and collecting worms for him.  He passed when I was 7.  That plot of land there is now a tennis court that my mom had installed long after dad passed.  Must be where I got the love of gardening. 

  

                                                            Have a great day!  God bless! 

Oh poop!

Not going to do a big post tonight.  It's late and I'm not feeling well.  Hubby and I had a bout of the 12 hour tummy bug.  Pretty much over it all but I had some other "girly" stuff going on and I'm still not back to normal.  Fortunately, Munchkin is doing much better.  Back to her fun loving silly self.  I'll have to upload more pics tomorrow. We had more rain all night last night.  The poor gardens.   

I leave you here with this silly photo.  I laughed so hard the day I took this picture.  I looked out the window and there was a poor sad face in the snow.  Yep, that's dog poop.  LOL  I just had to take a photo of it and share it.  Of course the was months ago, this past winter.  

Have a great day.  

God Bless!  

Nanny Snuggles

 Sorry I've been missing in action.  My 2 year old Granddaughter has been so sick this past week.  A little bit of everything including an ear infection.  It breaks a grandmother's heart to see the little ones suffering.  I've just been doing a lot of Nanny snuggles lately.  Tomorrow she goes back to day care.  She goes two days a week because Nanny needs a little down time.

I try my hardest to do a little quiet time some time during the day.  I would prefer mornings but I just haven't been getting up early enough.  I really should.  My daughter leaves around 7 so baby comes up stairs then.  So while she's taking her afternoon nap I try to get my quiet time done. My favorite spot to do this is outside.  Fresh air and the sounds of the birds chirping but we've had such a rainy year. 

Baby and I did manage to go down to the garden first thing this morning.  Figured we'd see how it goes.  She was very "helpful" watering all my plants. She even stuck around the area and didn't run off. Thank goodness!  She ate the one big strawberry we found.  She, her brother and cousin all love strawberries.  Actually they all enjoy most fruits.  She even helped carry the rutabaga up to the house.

 

Many plants are dying off.  Some are water logged.  I try to keep them off the ground as much as possible but it has just been a bad growing year.  With baby here 24/7 the gardens tend to get neglected too.  

Poor pepper has a roommate.  There was one little hole in the pepper so I knew to expect something.  When I cut it open, this is what I found. I will just be saving the seeds from this pepper.  I threw it out to the chickens.  One of them will have a treat. 

Someone gave me a pack of 6 Amish Paste tomatoes because they weren't going to have time to do anything with them.  I popped them in to my greenhouse.  They are growing like crazy!  There are so many tomatoes.  I sure hope they ripen for me.  We didn't get hardly any tomatoes last year.

I think this is such a great idea!  Do you enjoy receiving homemade usable gifts?  I'm not very creative but maybe this year needs to be a homemade gift giving year.  I would love some fruit trees but how do you keep them alive until you can plant them in the ground?  I'm in New England.  No popping them in the ground the day after Christmas!  I love new recipes.  I like popping things into a pot and coming out with something yummy. 

This is an example of popping things into a pan and getting something yummy.  I put in what garden veggies we had...summer squash, green beans, potato, eggplant then added onion and Italian Sausage.  It was so good.  So easy and using what we have in the kitchen. Oh ya, I had one red tomato and one green pepper I put in there. 

               I leave you with another photo my eldest granddaughter took on the school bus.

Summer day and ponies.

 Just the other day I was talking about cooler temps and doing wood to get ready for winter.  Well, today in the sun, in the direct sun, the thermometer read 111*.  Good grief. I even filled up the kiddie pool yesterday to let Munchkin play in it. 

  

I went to turn the hose off and when I came back around, someone had "misplaced" all her clothes.  Good thing we have no neighbors to worry about!  

              She then continued to go down the slides and swing on the swing.  What a crazy kid.  

Today we kept the clothes on but she took off on me.  Headed through the woods, down the path towards Grandpy's garage. I could not keep up with her and she was not stopping.  Thankfully God intervened and helped me out.  Down around the corner she went and out of site.  God said, "I got your back".  Lol  Then I heard her crying cause she tripped and fell.  "Thank you Lord" I said as I finally caught up to her.  

Some times watching the grand-babies can be hard on us grandparents.  We aren't as young or as fast as we used to be.  You add weight and bad knees and....ugh.  Haahaa.  

Munchkin is starting drive her Jeep.  Ok, we are learning.  lol  She loves to ride on the broom brooms, the four wheelers with the adults but isn't too sure about the Jeep and how to make it go where she wants or as you can see in the picture, how to stop.  She just kept going and it tried to climb right up the chicken fencing.  She got right back in and kept going.  She didn't get hurt.  

I have actually been on a cleaning spree lately.  Trying yet again to keep up with all the housework.  I've been a stay at home mom for most of my 34 years of marriage.  I did lots of babysitting when our kids were young. Then when they got school age I worked at our local post office for 12 years.  Very part time. Then I worked at one of our local banks for about 7 years when they were out of school but my granddaughter came along and I felt the Lord telling me to stay home with her.  So, me being the wonderful sinner that I am, told the Lord, fine I'll go to part time at the bank.  He then said, Uh no young lady, I said to stop working outside of the home and sure enough, I got fired.  It was a silly mistake and the error was found a week after I was let go but it got me home where God wanted me.

I'm doing a mix of www.flylady.com  and avirtuouswoman.org I learn a lot from both sites but I don't always follow along with everything.  Lately I am trying to do one project a day even if it's just something small like dusting all the cobwebs off the ceilings.  I did that before I sat down to play on the computer.  I have gone through the horrid sock basket to match all the socks.  I ended up throwing out a large garbage bag of single socks.  Where do all these socks go to??!!  They had been there a while too looking for a match because some of them were too small for my 12 year old granddaughter.  

The other day I cleaned out the refrigerator.  That looks nice now and the chickens were happy to get some of the wasted food.  Another day it was the microwave.  Another the dining room table and then a counter top in the dining room that was a catch all. Just little steps but they make big improvements. 

I have used my 2 year old granddaughter as an excuse for over a year now.  It is difficult to clean as she is going behind me making more mess but it has to be done. 

Hey, we had some of our green beans from the garden with dinner tonight. Such a small crop this year.  Sigh. 

Oh, I almost forgot.  The concrete, for the porch project my husband is doing, will be here tomorrow!  Poor guy, spent all day in the hot sun making the forms and getting everything ready to pour in the morning.  Still no help from anyone.  So to help him feel better I got out the foot spa, heated up some water, poured in some Epsom Salt and let him soak his feet.  At the end he said they weren't sore any more.  I had to take a photo to send to my daughter.  It's just not something we would expect to see him do, you know, the big tough guy.  lol  She of course posted it on FB. Seeing as how he still uses a flip phone and wouldn't know how to get on to FB, we should be safe.  Until one of his friends say, hey saw you soaking your feet on FB.  lol  Then we are in trouble. 

                 Well, it's getting late.  I'll leave you with a picture of two of my daughter's horses.  

                   Remington on the left and Riot on the right. Summer time back scratches.

                                                             Good night and God bless.

Fall is in the air.

 Finally, the temps are cooling here.  I can actually sit in my room without the air conditioner having to be on.  It is supposed to warm up again in a couple days.

Another indication that the weather is cooling...it's wood splitting time!  My husband barters for the logs.  It's nice to have friends in all different occupations.  When my kids were younger, I can remember them crying when the logging truck pulled in to the driveway.  Haahaa.  "Not more wood"!  It meant more work.  They sure don't complain about the consistent heat the logs pump out!  

When I was younger, I can remember using the little red wagon to haul the wood from the woodshed to the wood room. Don't turn the corner too fast or all the wood falls off and you have to load it on the wagon again and again and again.  lol   Now we use a skid steer!  Spoiled kids.    

 So my husband has another project he's doing in between dirt construction jobs.  He is residing our rental house.  It is his family home he grew up in.  He even cuts all the boards on his saw mill.  

It's a pretty large project he's doing and unfortunately, he's done probably 95% of it by himself.  He always seems to have time to help others but they "forget" to help him when he could use it.  

We will also be putting in all new windows upstairs.  The big hole is getting ready for concrete to support a beautiful farmers' porch.  A lot of upgrades have been made this home since we inherited it. My husband is the hardest worker I know.  He's trust worthy and respected.  He truly is a great guy.  I'm very fortunate to have him in my life.  Truly blessed by God.  Thank you Lord. 

The day lilies were dug up and put down in the front yard near the road.  I may grab some and put them up at our house. I've been told day lilies are pretty hardy and replant fairly easily.  Hope so

I hope you all have a fun and safe Labor Day weekend.  No special plans here.  Maybe some more cleaning.  I think the refrigerator is do for a good cleaning.  One of our local fairs is in full swing but I don't believe we'll be going.  Fairs just aren't the same as they used to be.  Maybe it's just me, I'm getting old.  lol  The crowds, the heat, the walking, and the prices just don't thrill me.  My husband loves to go...with the grand kids.  They are young enough to love it all.  They're 12, 6 and 2.  

School started for my granddaughter, 7th grade, last Tuesday.  My grandson starts this Tuesday, 1st grade.  So far 7th grade is a piece of cake.  lol  I forget her exact words but lets hope she feels the same way on day 100 as she does on day 3.  

My granddaughter takes a photo most days of the sun rise from her bus ride to send to me.  I look forward to them.  I'll have to remember tomorrow to upload one of them.  Its fun to watch the changes in the rising of the sun through out the school year. 

I will close tonight and leave you with these pictures of my youngest grandchild.  Munchkin was dancing and so happy.  She kept yelling, "Nanny! Nanny!  Happy boots Nanny, happy boots!" It was the cutest thing ever.  She loves wearing her cowgirl boots.  Just typing out these words brings a smile to my heart.

                                                             Good night and God bless.
 

Moved all 3000+ photos to the new laptop.

                                                             Good evening!  It's August 29th. 

 

Wow, this cold is hanging on.  It got better after two days and then it got worse.  While baby (my granddaughter) took a nap I was able to rest on the couch for a couple of hours.  I'm glad I used the crock pot for dinner tonight.  Didn't have to think about it after I put everything in.  

I made a cabbage and rice soup with sausage.  Cabbage and peppers from our own garden and the sausage is from a neighbor that supplied us with a freezer FULL of fresh pork products.  

I got the recipe off of  www.myorganizedchaos.net/slow-cooker-cabbage-roll-soup it's called cabbage roll soup.  The only problem I had was that the rice too longer than they thought it would but that is due to the type of rice I used.  I didn't use the instant rice.  It was still very good though. I would make it again.  I have one more cabbage I picked to find a recipe for.  Oh and I forgot to put the green beans in that I picked yesterday.

My granddaught got into her older brother's drawers today and wanted to wear all of his shirts. 

Excuse the messy living room.  Not feeling well today so I figured the mess will be there tomorrow.  You know no one will clean it for you so it's not going anywhere.  lol She had 5 on at one time.  Counting the couple that were on her legs.  

I got all my photos from my phone to my new laptop.  There were over 3000 photos on my phone  Now that they are on my computer I think I will delete them all off my phone.  Ever gone through you photos and asked yourself, why did I take that photo?  lol  There are a lot of those on there.

I will have to spend an afternoon going through and deleting many of them.  I do love to take photos though.  

The baby (above) we call her Munchkin, is in her crib beside my bed here.  She's watching a little educational TV before she falls asleep.  She isn't always crazy about sleeping in the basement with her parents. So it's time to shut off the TV and lights to get her to sleep. 

                                                 Till next time...God bless.  Have a great day.