Summer is gone, Winter is coming

The last month has been a blur, with our warm nights gone we are now starting to get ready for winter.

Our first freeze happened on September 27th and it was hard enough that when we went out the next morning all my tomato vines were blackened. 

Because we saw it coming, my husband came home from work and we spent an hour or more outside harvesting everything we could  find to bring in. 

This is what we could bring in, Tomatoes, Winter Sqash, Carrots, some Peppers and only one more Watermelon. My lovely girls wanted to showoff the carrots and watermelon :)

We didn't hardly get any of the tomatoes that were on the vines and found out later after quite a few freezing nights that we could have harvested the green ones and stored them over winter and they would have rippened. Unfortunately it was too late and the vines went flat.

I felt so bad seeing them all out there but they didn't taste very well since they had froze. We are pulling the vines and all the tomatoes so I don't have them all trying to reseed next year.

I did however get a good yield of Spaghetti Squash as you can see.
I had to fight the mice over growing these guys and I only had 2 vines (out of an original 10) going but I am pretty happy with the turnout, I just hope they all were ready since we just brought in everything.

Our strawberry plants are still looking great and so are a few herbs but everything else, including my grapes are down for the season. Praying the grapes will make it thru the winter!!

We also didn't get all of the onions or potatoes, technically the potatoes can still be harvested but I am not sure how long they will store. We had friends come over on Saturday right after the first freeze and they happily took 3 rows of onions. While they were with us they shared some of their chili harvest.

One of many batches roasted.

Now that everything is dead we are ripping it all out and tilling some straw in, now we get to plant some garlic we ordered.

Hope everyone is enjoying the change in weather.

Week 3

Oh boy am I starting to feel this challenge pull on me.

I am finding it harder to get my workouts in and this week I definitely didn't get my verse memorized.

Even though that technically means I am out of the challenge I am going to keep pushing thru.

I am looking at this as more of I lifestyle change and am going to keep working on that verse.

Hope everyone else out there is having a good time with this challenge.

Week 2 Down onto Week 3

Well this challenge is definitely just that a challenge.

First challenge for Week 2 was food, we didn't get to go shopping for fresh fruit or veggies so I had to get creative with our snacks. Normally we would munch on them between meals but since I was out I had to make up different things. Best one was baked corn tortillas, the kids love using them as chips (I was out of real chips too).

I also have added a part to my own personal challenge: Drinking enough water!!!

I know I don't drink enough water, I don't like water. Never really have, I would much rather a nice glass of tea, soda or juice. All with sugar in them so I am trying to not go those routes.

I have a water bottle that I carry with me everywhere since I always try to drink water and this week I have made the commitment to drinking 3 of them full each day. That will be a total of 96oz a day, so far I am a short each day but getting closer and closer to hitting my goal.

As for Claire requirements:
Workouts-
Monday-Fitness Blender with my kids and 2 stretching workouts after theirs
Tuesday- Hip Hop Abs from Beachbody (a fellow challenge member was doing them and encouraged me to dust off my discs and put them to use)
Wednesday- Another HHA session and it felt good!!
Thursday- HHA ab workout session
Friday- Cleaning the house but not much else because I pulled something in my left lower back.
Saturday- I walked around our field and tried to help friends harvest onions. Back was still hurting too much.
Sunday- Felt much better so I did 3 Fitness Blender stretching videos.

As you can see the Second challenge was not giving up when I hurt my back on Friday. I went to my support and asked for prayers.
Verse-Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough troubles of its own.
Matthew 6:34

This verse is hard for me because I am constantly trying to prepare for days ahead, I don't like to not be in control or at least ready for what each day brings especially with homeschooling four children. I also like to have a list of jobs to do when my husband is home so I feel that we use our time wisely.

Like I said this verse is a personal struggle for me, one I am still working on.
Accountability-I check in with my group every few days, sometimes daily if I have the time. I try to post every evening when I have complete my workout.

Over all I am thoroughly enjoying this challenge and I am loving the changes I can see in myself already.

On to Week 3!!!
I can't wait to see what it has in store for me :)

September Already!!

Wow where has this year gone? I honestly can not believe that we are in September, I am so not ready for fall. The past month went by really fast and I am so behind in my fall prep. I am hoping to get a jump on them this week. Biggest job right now is cleaning out the kids closets. I have noticed that all the kids have had major growth spurts and now have out grown last springs wardrobe. Normally we have quite the score at or local thrift store but the last few time I have gone in there was nothing in my munchkins sizes. 

I need to sort and donate all the stuff we no longer need and try to see what I might have stashed for this fall. I am so not the organized type but I try so wish me luck as I enter a very scary zone since the first room up is the girls......the two of them have trashed their closet in the last couple weeks since our rain has made it nice and cool, I guess that's taken in their young girl minds to mean dig into everything because they are cold.

On top of that we are having our first week off of school (started today) and it will be spent with quite a bit of it harvesting the remaining potatoes and majority of the onions from my mother in laws field since it is getting closer to freezing time. My husband is planning on taking a truck load of onions to friends and family when he goes to work next week.

For a fun part of their week the kids also requested that they get to have target practice with their .22 rifle and their bow. 

All of that is on top of our bi-weekly food bank volunteering which is this afternoon. 

 I look forward to sharing pictures!! 

Well Them's the Brakes

Yep that's them....he he he.

Since my husband works out of town our weekends are always pretty crazy but this past weekend was extremely crazy. First off we have a family reunion/camping trip coming up so my husband is working a really weird schedule to fit it in and therefore didn't get home till dinner time on Friday night but leaving Sunday afternoon instead of having a week off. To make the most of it Saturday was spent doing random work at home that needed both of us followed by a nice family dinner at my mother-in-laws with us leaving the kids there. Sunday was spend with the two of us doing some more garden work and clean up from the day before, again trying to get as much help from him since he was leaving after lunch. Now here comes the crazy, hubby drove my truck the night before and noticed with in seconds that my brakes were squishy. We noticed a few weeks ago that something was up but since time is very limited right now we planned on waiting till hubby had another week off. 

Nope!!
Sunday our plans changed, on the way over to get the kids and have lunch, there was a bit of fluid on the ground where the passenger tire was. Hubby got out and checked sure enough, brake fluid! My brakes needed done immediately since we planned on driving the truck over 100 miles this coming week and he didn't want to try to rush and do it when he got home (the night before our trip) in case something went wrong. We figured its better to give up our early arrival day in exchange for hubby going to work late to fix the brakes. Thankfully my mother-in-law kept my kids so we could run in with her car and get parts.

Luckily brakes were done pretty quickly Sunday night (at least in my opinion it was quick) and hubby made it to work only a bit late since he waited till early morning to drive down.

Hoping he can make it home at a good time on Wednesday to help me load the truck,  if not I think my kids are excited enough for the weekend they may do it by themselves.

Until then I am a cooking and packing fool ready for camping!!

On a side note, that rain I requested the other night came a tiny bit. The entire time we put the brakes back together and bled them it lightly sprinkled. Not enough to really wet the dirt but enough to cool the outside down nicely and it even continued to sprinkle off and on all night. The garden loved it and needed to be rain delayed but you couldn't even tell it rained on the rest of the ground.

Well good night all off to walk the dog one more time and hit the sack!!

Wednesday = No Kids

It's pretty weird having Wednesdays all to myself.

For the past month I have dropped the kids off at Grandma's for "summer school" and  when she also started taking them to Wednesday night church it just made sense for them to spend the night giving me quiet time.

Now the question is what have I done with a day of no kids. 

 The first day I literally cleaned like crazy. We had been super busy the weekend before so the house/ kitchen really needed a good cleaning. Then by 4:00 pm I was going a bit nuts, the house was too quite. I don't like quiet!! Being a mom of four kids quiet feels like something is wrong. I solved that by blasting my music. I don't get to do that much with kids, someone always asks to turn it down (their dad's influence even though he used to blast music too!!) I also found myself in bed early, like 9 pm early. Lights out and everything!

Second time I didn't work myself nearly as hard but cleaned out "trash" or what I call trash and the kids called treasures. I bagged it all up and then tied the bags so they couldn't see inside, then when they got home they helped load it up to take to the dumpster. 

Week three was a different since I wasn't home. I helped my brother in law and his girlfriend take their dogs into be fixed so I spent the day driving back and forth to town and preping school and this time I decided to take it easy again. 

Now here on Wednesday number 4 without kids I finally relaxed for a bit. I started by eating breakfast since I didn't eat with them before they left. Then I walked the dog (we adopted a new dog last week that likes to chase ANYTHING that he sees so he has to be walked on a leash). Worked on breakfast dishes and a few other things in the kitchen, with me going shopping for the month next week cleaning out the fridge and inventorying the freezer was needed. I also watched some NCIS, we started watching them a few weeks ago and I am totally hooked. 

Then I decided since it got cool outside a little earlier then it has been the last week I would go feed the garden. I have been wanting to do this since I noticed some squash on the vines Saturday. 

It took me over an hour to feed all of the squash and cucumber plants, grapevine and sprinkling it around the tomatoes. 

I then transplanted some chocolate mint from root cuttings my husband got and  my aloe plant that has been needing to go outside. The aloe will have to come back inside at some point before freezing nights come but I am hoping this will be good for it. 

Then I transplanted some standard mint and a tomato plant. I had to transplant these guys because something is messing with my waterlines. We noticed something wonky with the watering this weekend but assumed it was because of the unusually hot weather we were having last week. I assumed wrong!

I still don't know what is up with the water but plan on getting out there tomorrow night with a kid or two to find out and to dig up a few more herbs that are getting deprived of water. I am hoping moving them at this time of year won't hurt them to much, but since the waterlines are buried where they currently are I can't figure it out without digging them up. Hoping that with monsoon here (in a way) it will help them.

I spent over THREE hours out there working before I realized the sun was basically gone.

Tomorrow I am planning on doing a good cleaning job inside the house since Friday will be spent helping at the food bank and hubby comes home. 

That's enough for tonight. I will be back tomorrow with new tales of gardening work and how much laundry I folded (staring down some that's been calling my name all day).

Goodnight!!