Party On

I am once again exhausted from being consumed with food planning, shopping and preparation.  Luckily this weekend, for Annie's baptism party,

I had plenty of help in the kitchen.

 My mom, mother-in-law, myself, and sister all stayed up until 11:00 PM preparing fresh and Feingold safe salads for lunch the next day.

I must say we had an overkill on the food. One family friend didn't show up-went chopping wood for the winter instead.  Which is an important commodity around here.  We are opting to buy our wood this year(which is still cheaper than heating our house with electricity) due to crazy stressed out schedules.  Husband writing a dissertation and all.  Plus changing responsibilities at work.  (I really think this is an excuse to get out of the hard labor of hauling, cutting, and chopping wood- "I have a 200 page paper to write before Christmas!"  waaa waaa).
The family party went great this weekend.  I did end up offering some hand picked huckleberries for the homemade ice cream.   All the food was amazing and safe.

Following on the heals of Annie's special day and company at the house for the weekend, was Eli's 5th birthday.  I attempted to make a homemade Spiderman Cake.  I used beet juice to die the frosting red.  It turned out to be more of a deep pinkish purple color but Eli was happy and that's all that mattered.  I'm sure the Spiderman action figure on top helped with any disappointment with the "girl" color of frosting.

He is a very compassionate person by nature.  In fact all the little girls in the neighborhood and preschool have dubbed Eli as the boy they are going to marry (and he loves every minute of it).  Earlier this week he was playing hide and seek and happened to find his bag of birthday gifts I had stashed in my closet.   He came out very excited "Mom look, it's the ax I've always wanted."  With some heavenly help to handle the situation with grace and ease, I explained that those toys were indeed for his birthday.  I told him we would need to put them back and wrap them up so he could open them in three more days on his birthday.  This was his reply:  with complete sweetness and honesty, "Oh yeah, and I will just forget what they are and then when I open them I will be surprised."   That was that.  No fight, No fuss.  What a darling!  He opened them on his birthday and was still just as excited.

We also tackled some harvesting this week.  We brought in our corn and put away 30 quart bags.  We didn't get enough peas and way too many beans.  We still need to bottle more pickles.  We have plenty of pickled beats and some beats left in the ground for fresh ones.  Our onions are almost done, squash is going crazy, potatoes left to dig, broccoli still going, and cabbage and carrots coming out our ears.   I love my garden and love harvest time.  There is something incredibly satisfying about harvesting your own grown food.  Ahhhh- could life get any better than this?!