What we've been doing the past couple of weeks...

PREPARING FOR THE BABY - we borrowed this bassinet from a friend. Alice and Elmo tried it out and really liked it. A few months ago, as a way to help Alice share toys, we taught her how to 'trade.' After laying in the bassinet, Alice decided she wanted to trade beds with the baby. She also likes to trade her milk for Bruce's root beer and trade her crayons for my ink pen.

CANNING APPLE PIE FILLING & APPLE BUTTER - Alice and Bruce worked hard peeling, coring, and slicing two huge grocery bags full of apples.



MAKING PIES - We've been making tons of pies lately, with all the fresh fruit we have access to. This one is called Faith's Backyard Pie. It has everything I could find in our backyard mixed together--raspberries, blackberries, apples, and rhubarb.


DEALING WITH THE TERRIBLE TWOS - It seems like shortly after Alice's second birthday she suddenly started showing signs of entering the terrible twos. Lots of tantrums, testing limits, disobeying, and general mischief. However, this picture actually shows more her jealousy of anything mom holds. Apparently, the watermelon was broaching her territory. Usually it's only babies she gets upset about me holding!

This watermelon is not nearly as big as our prize winning mellon mentioned in the last entry, but it was the first that we cut open that was actually completely ripe, which was a nice surprise. We've been having a hard time telling when they are ready to be eaten and have been disappointed more than once.



GOING ON WALKS/RIDES - Alice prefers to be towed behind us when we go on walks nowadays--who can blame her? Here she is on a Saturday morning, still in her pjs, going on a walk with dad. You can see his shadow on the right.

Ward Opening Social

This past Saturday we went to the ward's opening social, which had a state fair theme. There was a pie baking contest, home-grown produce contest, watermelon seed spitting contest, and hotdog eating contest. There were 21 pies entered into the contest and we won the best fruit pie category with the below recipe. We used raspberries instead of blueberries, since that's what's currently growing in our backyard and it was very yummy!

Creamy Blueberry Pie

• 3 cups fresh blueberries
• 1 (9 inch) pie crust
• 1 cup white sugar
• 1/3 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 1/2 cup sour cream
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/4 cup butter

1. Combine 1 cup sugar, 1/3 cup flour, and salt. Add eggs and sour cream, stirring until blended.
2. Place blueberries in pastry shell, and spoon sour cream mixture over berries.
3. In another bowl, combine 1/2 cup sugar and 1/2 cup flour. Cut in butter or margarine with pastry blender until mixture resembles course meal. Sprinkle this mixture over sour cream mixture and berries in the pie shell.
4. Bake at 350 degrees for 50 to 55 minutes, or until lightly browned. If desired, garnish with additional blueberries and mint leaves.

Here is Alice loading our watermelon in the car for the produce contest. Right after they announced our winning pie, we got another blue ribbon with this baby. The pictures just don't do it justice--this is a big watermelon! And heavy!


After the produce winner was announced they started announcing the winner of the watermelon seed spitting contest. I was getting really excited because as far as we knew, Bruce had the record for that too. But someone who came after us beat the record, so we didn't sweep the competition completely. I think Bruce got 29 and something feet and the winner was seven inches farther, so he still did pretty good. Bruce said if he had won the seed spitting contest, he would have entered the hotdog eating contest, which was after the winners of the other competitions were announced.

The winner of the hotdog eating contest ate 5 hotdogs in 90 seconds. He was still chewing when the time was up, but was able to swallow, so it counted. It was pretty gross though. Especially when he dipped his bun in water to make it go down easier.