Too Long

It has been a long time. Too long. I am pretty disappointed in myself. As always, I kind of have an excuse but even I think it is pretty lame. First I'm pregnant and the first trimester, Jacob was in Little Rock for training.  I had my active two year old by myself and I was trying to get in a pretty big garden in before I left to join Jacob in Little Rock.
I would love to catch up on all the exciting things we have been up to but then I'd never get to what we are doing now so I'm just going to start right in.
My brothers were visiting this weekend. Friday night we got some more rain that our garden desperately needed so Aurora got to do one of her favorite activities, run in the rain.  After Jacob had enough of running in the rain, Uncle Everett kindly indulged Aurora… stipulating that he must have a rain coat…. therefore Aurora wanted a raincoat.

We are already wet, why not go in the pool!

 

 

When we are home on Friday nights we sometimes do movie night. No surprise, Aurora wanted to watch "Beauty and the Beast." This is pretty much all she ever wants to watch. Everett and Wesley were thrilled.  Although a bit disappointed because it delayed Everett from playing the Wii, they were both troopers.

Last weekend we went back up to Conneutville and Erie.  Aurora was thrilled to go swimming in gramma's pool.  She LOVES the water.  She does excellent with her swimmies on.  She doesn't need any help and doesn't really want it. The problem comes when we take off the swimmies.  She still does not want help. She just wants to swim on her own…. which she can't yet.  She gets very frustrated with us holding on to her that it gets to the point where we just have to let her go under a little so she understands that she needs our help.  This is also why we haven't joined a city pool. They require a lifejacket in most of the big pools but this totally prohibits her from being able to learn how to swim.  It throws her balance off and makes her back heavy.  But she loves the pool otherwise!

She loved this spiderman gear!

This past weekend we got together with some of my old high school friends. My friend Greg and Becky have a beautiful daughter, Isla, who is 6 months older than Aurora.  In the past I had noticed the age difference when they got together to play but now it seemed to have melted away.  By the end of the party these two were the only ones left around their age and they got some one on one play which was fantastic.  Isla has a very similar personality to Aurora, bossy, determined and likes to do what she wants.   This was the first time Aurora played one on one with someone as fierce as her.  What was even better was Becky and Greg had the same attitude as Jacob and I to let them go and duke it out. It was great for Aurora, I wish they lived closer so we could do this more often.  Unfortunately we didn't too many good pictures.  

Fighting over something

I got this bucket fair and square.

We're good, I swear.

Happy Birthday, Alex

For a whole week before Alex's 2nd birthday it was all Aurora talked about.  Every morning when she woke up, Alex's birthday party was the first thing she talked about. We started a count down.

Playing with ballon strings

She is not sure what to do with it.  

One bite and she already has a sugar coma. 

What? do you have have a problem with they way I eat my cake? 

Here, Aunt Erin. (She is probably going to kill me for putting this up.)

Would you like some frosting too? 

Ohhhh… you have a different kind

Does yours taste better than mine? 

Cookies I made for the party. It was a nautical theme.

It is pretty embarrassing that I don't have any pictures with Alex in them.  

Lenten Brew

Since moving, Jacob has been anxious to start making beer again.  He always likes to make a "Lenten Brew" so the start of Lent gave him some incentive to get started.  Here are some pictures of the various stages of the brewing.  He made a porter and an IPA.

Her first inclination was to get in the beer crate

Gently, gently!

St. Patrick's Day

My Irish Red Head all St. Patrick's Day upped.

Inspecting Irish Soda Bread

Honoring Irish Soda bread

Devouring Irish Soda bread

We've had enough Sap for one year

We had another exciting week of sap making (about 1.5 weeks ago now).  Jacob's buckets were overflowing.  Also in this process, I discovered my numbers last time I wrote about this were slightly off.  We had 70 gallons total before reduction last time.  This time he has about 160.  At one point once again the weather turned nasty and this time, Jacob's makeshift sugarshack did take a beating that brought it down but he fixed it. Another frustration was that he let one pot go too long and it burned out.  This is quite messy.  Hard, dried sugar all over the pot and stove.  In this case, the pot and stove are worse for the wear.  The process took longer than expected, we were done Sunday afternoon but had originally planned to be done Saturday afternoon.  But all in all, everything turned out great.  Still, Jacob had had enough syrup reduction for the year so he pulled all his taps.  Total we have over 6 gallons of syrup.  We can't use this much in a year… or two so we are selling it if you are interested in some all natural, home brewed syrup.  It is a very dark syrup and although probably a littler thinner than commercial syrups, it tastes great.

At this point Jacob is running the syrup through cheese cloth to filter any particles out.

Oh yeah, we made cookies last week too.