Feeling the fall vibes!

 If you know me at all, you know that I love fall!!!!  The smells, the pumpkins, the fall foods and soups and sweater and cozy fires all just get to my soul!  I love it all!

Looks like the Maple Latte and Maple Scone was pretty good!!!!  Yum!  Thank you Latte Luv!

I've been having some fun in the kitchen and I began some canning!

This I made from a spaghetti squash and topped it with cooked chicken and then poured a homemade Alfredo sauce over top!  It was so yummy!

Mom and I made some salsa and canned peppers last week!

I decided to freeze some peaches for Ashlyn's lunch and she loves these!

Then Mike's mom and I made applesauce!  Lena helped us at the end do her applesauce too and this is always a lot of work but so fun!  We love homemade applesauc!!!!

We always do this at Mom Lapps house by her basement porch.  There we are out of the hot sunshine and she's got this gigantic outdoor cooker that we use to can all our filled jars!  It the best system!

We gave Mom this applesauce churner for Christmas and she was trying to figure out the parts!  Once we got it going, it worked like a charm!!!!

This was the first time making applesauce with all the kids in school.  My days alone are so far filled up with events like these.  This day went well and now we have fresh applesauce to enjoy all year long!

Coffee shops are just bringing in the fall flavors and that makes me search once again on Pinterest for new pumpkin recipes and enjoy the fall vibes!!!!

Happy pumpkin season!

Labor Day Weekend!

 Labor Day Weekend is always a weekend we look forward too!  Years back we would travel to Ohio and watch Mike play baseball all weekend long.  The kids and I enjoyed this SO MUCH!!!!  The motels were fun for the kids and they got extremely dirty by the ball field dirts all around us but it always gave us great memories!  Then the team stopped going to this tournament and we had a "staycation" at home for a few years.  Matt and Lena and their boys pitched a tent in our back yard one time and we had numerous campfires and just stayed local for the long weekend!  That was fun too!!!!  Then the cabin burned down last Spring and by Labor Day Weekend, we were ready to help my parents move back in the brand new cabin!  We packed up a bunch of pillows and sheets and bedding and decor and anything that we wanted to keep at the cabin!  It was a busy weekend of tons of work and the guys put beds together late into the night while us ladies cleaned the floors and filled the new kitchen cabinets!  This year we went to the cabin again and had such a lovely time relaxing and being with family!!!!

The new cabin hosted a few crowds this summer and we couldn't wait to be the ones to finally get there again!  We love the new cabin that dad built and the kids played nonstop with cousins!  We ate such good foods!  We saw wildlife and wild bears and wild bucks!  We watched tree stands get set up for the upcoming archery season!  We took golf cart rides in and out of dads long cabin driveway!  So many games of Panic were played and books were read and the boys played hunting in the woods for hours!  Austin came home with his first dose of poison ivy but he don't mind a bit because he loved the woods so much!  The girls played around the teepee and walked in the woods and took turns on the swings.  Campfires were started and the cabin life is just simply the best kind of life!!!!!  

Friday - Monday never seemed long enough but we sure enjoyed the days spent at the cabin!

Mike loves the porch furniture!  The cabin is always a place he relaxes and enjoys!  This year him and Matthew made a tee time and went golfing Saturday.  This was fun for the two of them and I'm sure they will do it again!  He does such a great job spending time with the children!

We have really poor phone service at the cabin but I never mind this!  I actually look forward to unplugging and being gadget free for the weekend.  Well, it looks like someone must have been having some fun on phone besides me.

Another highlight for Matthew was that on Sunday he went kayaking and fishing with my brother John Micheal.  He loves to fish and taking the kayaks was just a cherry on top for him!  They only caught a few but Warren couldn't wait to go show my mom what his daddy caught!  Then later that night, they roasted the fish on the campfire and ate them.

Mom and I traveled together to the cabin with my little ones and as we pulled into the driveway, we saw these deer!  Dad, Tyler, Mike and Matthew joined us later that night!

Warren showing mom the "fish"!!!

These boys played in the woods for hours ... not lying!  They both wore their camouflage clothes each day and Austin had his plastic bow and no point arrow along and they pretended to shoot animals.  Once he said they made a squirrel trap with some sticks, poison ivy and rocks.  I told him not to touch the poison ivy but he said that's what kills the squirrels.  🤨.  I wasn't worried about him getting poison because it's something I never had to deal with with any of our children but he did come home with some on different areas of his body.  He thinks they are mosquito bites but I know they are poison.

One thing we love about dad's cabin is that we almost always see bear!  This bear found some peanuts on the top board and smelled the remaining fish bones on the ground.  Watching these animals is amazing!

This was the crew!  Austin and Colson and Kaden with Warren tagging behind!  These boys have no idea how lucky they are to have a cabin like my dad's to make the best kind of memories in!!!!

Baby Weston is the most darling little boy!  Never makes much noise and is just so sweet!

The outdoors is the best at the cabin!

Crazy and dramatic Olivia here!!!!

They are ready to make a kill!!!!  I can't wait to actually see the day when they do kill a squirrel or a rabbit or a bird!  It will be epic!!!!

Hadassah and Jeremiah joined us for a day at the cabin too!  Everyone but Jason's and Ryan were able to join the fun and we love when it suites this many of us to spend a long weekend together!

Happy Labor Day everyone!  We are now back home and back to work and school.  Life goes on and fall is in the air!

September!

 September is one of my favorite months of the year!  The skies are just blue blue! The weather starts to cool down but yet the afternoons are warm and the evenings are cooler.  It's when I am ready to turn off the AC in the house and open up all the windows.  However, it's also the time of year when Mike starts with fall allergies.  He only deals with this a few weeks out of the year and I'm very grateful it's usually on the mild side but Sunday night he had a sneezing fit and had to stay inside.  With all windows closed tightly.  With a box of tissues near by.

September is one of favorite months also because that's when pumpkin season begins!  I love all things pumpkin and can't wait to enjoy some fall flavored drinks!  The smells of cinnamon and nutmeg warm me!  The colors of my hydrangeas are turning from white to pink.  The Teddy Bear pumpkins that we grew in the garden are ready to display on the front porch!

September is when I find myself reaching for all the plaids and long sleeve shirts!  It's the time when campfires are needed to stay warm durning the evening hours.  

School is usually in full swing by September and we are in a routine of good bed times and back to packing lunches.  Austin had his first full day of kindergarten.  He was both excited and nervous.  He was excited to finally take his lunch along to school but nervous that the day would be long. He was right.  He came back home this afternoon happy and with a smile but he said he cried one time near the end of the day.  He was ready to come home.  He said that Mrs. Glick was with him and he seemed totally fine when he came bouncing into the house door after school!

While Austin enjoyed his first full day at school, Ashlyn was home on the couch.  She woke up saying she didn't sleep good.  She said her head hurt a bit.  She didn't look real great out of her eyes but she got dressed and ate some breakfast and went with me to drop the school children off at school.  Car pulling with Lena has been such a life saver to not have to run to school twice a day, every day!  I took them all this morning and Lena brought Austin back home for me!  Ashlyn and I walked together to her class to see what her teacher recommended and after trying to take her temperature in the school office, I just brought her along home with me.  The school termomators were not working and this is the year to let the kids home if there is any question of them being at school.  She came home and slept on the couch while I worked in the kitchen.  

I thought this was going to be my first "long day" alone at home.  I asked my mom to come help me make some salsa to can.  She came and we chopped, cut, mixed and cooked up two batches of fresh salsa and then filled our pint jars and cold packed them for 10 minutes.  The house smells like fresh salsa now and mom also canned some sweet peppers.  Ashlyn slept almost the whole time we worked in the kitchen.  She woke up feeling better and played the rest of the afternoon.

Matthew is back into school and even though he loved, loved his summer job at the shop, it's now time to focus on studies and more on golf.  He is playing on the school gold team and is doing a really great job!  It makes for a long, busy day because he goes straight from school to golf and is home after supper.

Hadassah is deep into cleaning houses and offices and loves to be with her friends!  She hopped on the mower after lunch today for me and cut the grass.  We keep getting these summer rains that turned our yard into a beautiful green lawn once again and we are back to mowing twice a week!

I love September and hope to enjoy the beautiful as they come!  The spend those last warmer days outside are top on my wishlist.  To move from summer into fall mode is always a highlight for me!  To sip on those pumpkin drinks are delicious!

Enjoy these last days of summer!