Hello!

I hope everyone had a great Halloween!  Ours… not so much.  I got excessively angry with Nathan for not saying thank you after he received his candy and after about 15 minutes, he wanted to quit and go home.  He now says he hates Halloween and never wants to go trick-or-treating again. 😦  I feel horrible.  I didn’t mean to ruin the kid’s entire experience this year.  William found the whole ordeal somewhat boring and wanted to go home too.  So after 20 minutes of getting everyone in their costumes and ready to go, we were home 15 minutes later with both Nathan and I mad at each other.  He was still mad most of the day yesterday and Tuesday’s morning routine was a horrendous experience.  Thankfully by nighttime we seemed to have found a common ground and were happy with each other once again.  After a string of really rough mornings and drop-offs, today went exceedingly well and everyone went off to school happy and calm.  Phew!  Sometimes we seem to get on a string of negative days and I am convinced it will never end.  Then they lift as suddenly as they descended and we are all in a good grove again.  I have a habit of assuming that when something is hard, it will be hard forever and nothing but misery is to be expected.  Thankfully, life has proven me wrong time and time again but I still can’t seem to break the habit and keep things in perspective.  Yesterday I was sure all my kids would end up drug dealers and in jail but today I feel like they may actually make it!

This Saturday we are going to a neighborhood camping in the park event.  The boys (including David) are extremely excited about it.  I got us all sleeping bags and we have our tent ready to go.  I have also been on Pinterest a lot researching good picnic foods to take camping.  I have decided on tiny cheeseburgers on skewers, pasta salad, and sliced fruit on skewers in addition to cookies and some other snacks.  Be prepared for lots of pictures!  I’ll let you know how it goes!

This week, in a sudden flurry of determination, I decided to begin lacto-fermenting our own vegetables.  I bought a book and some air-lock lids from Amazon and tomorrow will start with making pickled carrots and sauerkraut.  I really am a bit overly excited about it and am once again wanting to move to Pennsylvania and start a little farm.  This happens to me a several times a year.  I really think I was meant to be Amish.  When my book arrived yesterday, I leapt for joy and jubilantly declared to the boys that we were going to start eating fermented vegetables to which William immediately replied that he hated fermented vegetables.  He’s never had one in his life and while I am sure that there is a possibility we may all, in fact, hate them – I refuse to be deterred and am hoping for the best!

So between lacto-fermenting vegetables and roughing it in the park we’ve got a lot to do for the remainder of the week.  I’ll keep you posted!