The rest of us

Fall has been remarkably mild here.  Baby Becca has dominated the Gardunia news, but the other kids insisted that I post something about them.

 Emily has been taking a lot of pictures this month, ~ 400. Good thing it is a digital camera, that would be a lot of film to develop.  Kodak employees everywhere are a little sad to hear that.  She took this great picture of the Huxley water tower.

A bunch of silly self portraits.

This is from a kinda moody sad portrait session with Colleen.  This could be used in an afternoon special warning against bullying or something that makes children sad, like a world without ice cream.  Any moment political ads will use this image to explain that Romney or Obama is going to take away your children's ice cream. Beware.  A sad future for all of us.

 While we were at the hospital, Emily and the girls went to the Schloemer's house and here is Emily's pic of Kate telling a story instead of napping.  Word.

She also made Kate robots to play with.  Kate has been kinda obsessed with robots lately.  Regularly when I wake her up her first words are, "Why are there not more robots? Why don't people want robots?"

Aleah drew a map of our house with fantastical elements including a robot dog.  She was so excited to make her vision a reality that we made this robot dog together last Sunday while Kate was napping.  She was impressed.  Finally a robot in her house.

While Leila's mom was here, we went to the science center - thanks to Chris's generosity.  Afterwards, we were starving.  The Des Moines Farmer's market was finished and some of the bars were open for lunch, as well as the soup kitchen line, but we were hunting for something not quite so obviously a bar.  We found Fong's Pizza - an all hours Japanese pizza joint decorated with cool japanese and chinese decor.  We sat at the bar and ordered the loaded baked potato pizza - potatoes, taco meat, bacon bits, chives, green onions, sour cream, and jalapeños with a cream sauce and two different kinds of cheese.  It was remarkably well received by my cheese pizza, no sauce loving kits.

Everyone enjoying the loud indie rock and pizza, which was very filling piled high with potatoes, cheese, and fillings.

I made one last batch of fiery hot salsa.  It is mostly habañero and paprika peppers.  It was so spicy that I cooked it outside on charcoal so that the fiery fumes didn't overwhelm us.  If you would like a jar, I will mail you one, send me your address and remember it isn't a weapon, its food that burns use sparingly.

I also brought home two bushels of apples.  Prices are high this year because of a late freeze that killed most of the blossoms this spring.  The local overpriced U-pick place had some for 34 dollars/bushel, but strangely only 15/half bushel.  The teller was confused why I wanted multiple half bushels instead of two full bushels.  Even more when two half bushels overflowed the bushel box.  Ahh, math.  It's a beautiful thing. 

Colleen has been a great help and happy to have half day kindergarten.