last week's hike at the resevoir

John Adams

Trip and I just finished watching the HBO miniseries on John Adams, and I highly recommend it. We both thought it was pretty great! It's 7 parts, but I didn't get bored of it at all (although it's a lot to watch in the few days we had it from the library). Totally worth the time, fan-frickin-tastic acting and great music too. Stuff like that reminds me of how poorly we know our own history. It's really quite pitiful. I might have to capitalize on the aftermath of watching this and bone up on my American History.

Purple Jellyfish and Bob the Builder had a happy Halloween

Pretty Pumpkin Cookies

open letter

Dear Pumpkin Fairy,

Today at the Halloween party I drew a ticket out of a bowl of ghosts made of tissues and won the big prize! The prize was a big pumpkin bowl full of candy all for me! Just for me and no one else! My mommy seems much less excited about my prize than I am. I know she says candy is a special treat and not very healthy for us to eat and I know that you come to my house on Halloween night and take away lots of my candy and leave me a toy and I was thinking maybe if I leave you out my extra prize bucket of candy you could just leave me an extra toy. I do love candy but I also do love toys and last year I remember you left me a very nice Care Bear, and so maybe I will just eat 1 or 2 pieces of candy from my special prize bucket and leave the rest for you and you can bring me an extra toy. Thank you very specially!

Love,
Anya Campbell, age 4

Pumpkin Patch

Asher and Mommy Make Apple Butter

We made SO many batches of apple butter and applesauce this year to can. Asher was quite the trooper, always wanting to help (and by help, I mostly mean eat apples). I think the peeler/corer/slicer was the main appeal; this year he was strong enough to crank away on it.

(if any of my friends actually read this, please forgive this confession)

Ok, I'll say it loud (in print, at least): I hate texters!

I hate that all of my friends have fancy cell phones or blackberries, and that everyone texts all the time. It drives me nuts when people must stop and respond to every text they get, no matter what they're doing at the time. This really, really, really bothers me. Why can we not just have a conversation with whomever is face-to-face with us, and then respond to the other "urgent" messages later? Why must we be so digitally connected? Why is it acceptable to multi-task in this way? WHY AM I THE ONLY ONE WHO FEELS THIS WAY?!?!

Seriously, I am almost to the point of saying we should all get rid of our cell phones.

Grandpa Tom visited

2 Years and One Week