Kaleb finally lost his first tooth yesterday. He will be 7 on Wednesday and most of his friends have already lost atleast one tooth. The tooth fairy came and he got one dollar for his tooth. Is that inflation or what?
I hope he loses his front teeth soon because he grinds them and they are really tiny now and look funny. How my little boy is growing up!
This morning we went apple picking at the Colorado Agricultural Extension just outside of town. These apples were big and beautiful and were just 50 cents a pound.
We caravaned with some friends of ours and our kids enjoyed playing and picking with thier kids.
There were lots of different kinds of apples and they were low enough that the boys could reach them. They even allowed taste testing, so of course we all had to try different varieties.
Cole enjoyed using the apple picking pole to get the apples at the tops of the trees, but we really didn't need them because there were so many down low that were great.
Kaleb had a loose tooth, so I thought he might leave the orchard without it, but he managed to keep it in even after he ate several apples.
Just outside of town there is an orchard called Kiva Orchard that for some reason (I think it has to do with bankruptcy) they are letting people pick the fruit for free. So yesterday I took a trip up there with several of my friends and their kids to pick apples and peaches.
I had Cole and Landon with me (Kaleb was in school) and we picked some apples first and then peaches. Of course when I got home I had to go through the box and pick out some of the ones the kids put in there, but they did try to help and I think they enjoyed it.
Here is a picture of Sarah Hurst and Michelle Veach on thier ladders picking apples. The apples were really small so I didn't get alot, just enough for us to eat ourselves.
Here is the box of peaches we picked. I decided to break in the pressure canner my mom gave me for Christmas last year and try canning a batch of peaches.
My friend Monica came over this morning and helped me get started canning. There was alot of peeling and cutting, but I felt like I was being really resourceful for once. I know there are people that can lots of things every year, but that is not something I grew up with so this was all new to me. I ended up canning 5 quarts and 4 pints of peaches. I hope they are yummy!
Our garden has done okay this year, although I would have liked it to produce more.
We only got 2 heads of broccolli, which is disappointing because Kaleb loves broccolli.
We have gotten cherry tomatoes constantly all season, but most of my big tomatoes aren't ripe yet. You can't make much with the cherry tomatoes but they are really good on salads.
I find out now that our growing season is too short for cantaloupe, so although we had lots of cantaloupe, they are all really small. From about 15 cantaloupe that I picked, I only chopped up one large bowls worth of cantaloupe.
We had 3 boxes worth of veggies: cantaloupe and broccolli, cucumbers and tomatoes. Next year we are hoping to either add more boxes or rows in the ground.
Last year we had lots of cucumbers for the number of plants we had in one box, so this year I gave them their own box so they would have enough room to spread out. Well they didn't so I guess I won't get pickles this year either.
We have some good cucumbers but many of them I think got too much sun because they are turning yellow.
This is our second year at gardening and we are getting better. I would eventually like to have enough in our garden to make salsa and spaghetti sauce and can pickles. Maybe next year won't be so cold in June and we can start sooner. I do enjoy seeing the fruits of our labors this time of year and I think it is a good lesson for the kids to learn about planting seeds and watching them grow.
We started our soccer season a couple of weeks ago, but I just haven't been able to get any good pictures yet. Kaleb and Cole are on two different teams, but on the night I took these pictures Cole's team didn't have enough kids to play thier game so Kaleb helped out.
Monday and Wednesday Kaleb plays and Tuesday and Thursday Cole plays. The boys enjoy playing soccer and they are getting much better at it. I will have more pictures as the weeks progress.
I just wanted to update how things went with my biggest loser contest at my local rec center. We just had our final weigh in after 13 weeks. I lost 15 lbs overall, which is not how I wanted to end, but it is better than nothing. I have been pretty steady at losing a pound a week for the past couple of months. My doctor says slow and steady weight loss means you'll keep it off, so I hope that's true. Anyways, it's over and I plan on continuing watching my diet and exercising atleast 5 days a week. So in 35 more weeks I should be where I want to be!
Landon is at the Children's Kiva which is a montessouri preschool in town. The older boys went there in years past, so he has had no problem transitioning into preschool because he was already comfortable with the teachers and environment there. He is going 3 mornings in the middle of the week.
Kaleb is in first grade at Mesa Elementary which is where he went to kindergarten last year. He has the same teacher and he is loving being at school all day like a big kid. He has really grown in his reading over the summer and enjoys learning more of math too.
Cole is in morning kindergarten at Mesa, so he and Kaleb can walk to school together in the mornings. He is excited to go to the bigger school and to learn to read this year.