Family fun Friday

Last week was a short week for Anna at school; she had Thursday and Friday off.  Plus, Matt took Friday off of work as part of his fall vacation days.

 

So we decided to make the most of it and spend as much of the day as we could handle at Devil's Lake State Park, even if the weather was a bit cool.

We managed a hike to Parfrey's Glen, or at least until the path stopped and we had to cross the stream two or three times.  Then I decided that my balance wasn't good enough and it was taking a long time for Matt to help his three ladies cross on logs and rocks, so we turned around and headed back.

We also had a yummy cold weather picnic, complete with hot chocolate in the thermos.

Then we headed back to the main park area to play around in the leaves and at a playground before I got too cold (which, in itself, is pretty amazing since I haven't been "cold" all summer and most of the fall due to carrying around my own internal heater).

Saturday I put Matt to work cleaning up the yard.  I would have loved to help, but have learned that there are certain things that I just can't do right now.  Saturday night the low was predicted in the 20s so Matt pulled up the rest of the tomato plants and grabbed what he could off of the vines.  It turns out it didn't even frost that night so we could have kept harvesting tomatoes, but we were definitely ready to be done.
    

In the afternoon Matt worked on putting the truck back together while I took the girls to BouncyTown to get some extra energy out (for them, not me).

I think we can officially say that we have had our best tomato year ever.  We made all of our "normal" amounts of spaghetti sauce, chili sauce, and pizza sauce, and then managed an extra batch of salsa, lots of stewed tomatoes, and several quarts of tomato juice.  And we still have a counter full of varying shades of tomatoes.  I tried a recipe for green tomato jam today (made with lots of sugar and jello) and it went over fairly well so I may make another batch sometime this week.

We're back into the swing of school again this week for Anna.  Kate and I have a couple of playdates set up in the mornings.  Matt is getting an extra day to bike to work.  And I'm trying to make sure that I rest in the afternoons for awhile.  The uncomfortable stage of pregnancy started earlier with this baby than with either Anna or Kate, so I'm trying to rest when I can.  Our weekday lives are pretty routine, but I think we all enjoy our family time on the weekends.