in pursuit of wild things

Tomorrow is Littlest’s birthday party (actually birthday is Monday). We will be celebrating three years of his life. He wants a Batman birthday cake. Later today I will bake a cake and make buttercream icing in various colors. Then I will turn over the project to my amazing husband and he will make Littlest’s dream for a Batman cake come true. The guys at work tell my husband he has to surrender his “man card” because he decorates the childrens’ birthday cakes. Well, I am not sure exactly what that means…I am a woman and will never truly grasp why men speak to each other as they do…nor do I really need to. My husband is an attentive and playful father to his children and my very precious unmerited and undeserved blessing from God. I honestly believe Jesus placed me in my husbands arms and chose him to be my knight in shining armor on this earth. He is my everything and I often pray that when it comes time to meet Jesus we can do so together. I cannot imagine the pain of leaving him in the arms of Jesus and having to live in this world without him. He is my man and that is all the “man card” he shall ever need.

Yeah…I got a little off topic there.

Our church celebrated 120 years of ministry this past weekend. The kids had a great time playing games and running all around the church property. I enjoyed listening to the singing and  blue-grass music. Middle Boy’s front tooth has been ready to come out the past couple of weeks…he’s had that snaggle-tooth look. He played in the inflatables with such abandon that I was pretty sure the tooth was going to come out at church. But no, it did not. Then I was certain his tooth would get lost in the corn pit as he cannonballed himself into it…but no…didn’t happen. Instead his tooth came out when we stopped at Wal-Mart on the way home. Now he can wish for his two front teeth for Christmas this year. Middle Boy thinks it is pretty cool that a Dum-dum sucker fits perfectly in the spot his former front teeth occupied…for some reason his stunt makes my skin crawl.

I’ve slowly worked on the apples this week. I put up about sixty apples in storage. I picked the most perfect apples and wrapped them in paper towels and then in a plastic grocery bag and stored them in the fridge. I am hoping they will at least last us through February. The imperfect apples I made in to a gallon of applesauce and we’ve been munching on the others. I still have more apples to process and they may just become applesauce too. I can make a half gallon in my crockpot at a time so I could likely finish up this weekend. I’ve also have a dehydrator on hand…dried fried apple pies are good.

Wednesday night Littlest fell asleep at church and ended up sleeping in the nursery the entire time. My friend Mrs. Cuddle-me (Littlest gave her that nick name for the blog) carried him to the van for me. When we got home I realized he had a little fever which made me feel bad. Hopefully, no one else will catch his cold. Yesterday Oldest wasn’t feeling well either so I called it a sick day. We did watch a couple of educational shows on Amazon and Netflix so the day wasn’t a total washout. If you happen to be studying the Pilgrims right now the documentary called Mayflower Pilgrims on Amazon (free if you have Amazon Prime) is pretty good and goes nicely with the book Pilgrim Stories. I spent the time making applesauce muffins and apple chips.

Apple Chip Recipe

Slice apples really thin or think if you like chewy apple chips. I then simmered them in simple syrup until translucent. (Simple syrup is one cup of water and one cup of sugar brought to a boil.) I put the apples in the pot when the syrup boiled and then turned it down to a simmer. I simmered the apples about ten minutes (but that will depend on your apples and how thick you cut them) and then drained them a bit before arranging them on a cookie sheet. Bake until golden for crisp apple chips or take out of the oven when first starting to color for chewy chips. Mine baked for about twenty minutes. The chips are soft when they first come out of the oven but crisp up nicely as they cool. I salted the second batch before putting them in the oven and we liked those a bit better.

Last week we finished our study of astronomy from Apologia. We celebrated our accomplishment by snacking on astronaut food during game time. I can’t say it was something I’d ever want to eat again but it wasn’t horrible. The kids loved the dried ice cream and it did taste good but I could not get over the texture. I feel so sorry for the scientist who have to live on this stuff in the space station.

gift box from friend

the sun came out