Today is one of the kids favorite solemnities, the feast of All Saint's Day.  The kids were thrilled when I found their costumes from last year.  With the baby due in just over three week and Cursillo starting this week (I'm on team) making new costumes wasn't something I have been able to tackle.  So we recycled last year's costumes and I was very happy they still fit (well enough).

Matthias was his favorite saint...St. John Vianney; Augustin was St. Don Bosco and Samuel was an angel.

Every year our parish has a "parade of saints" the Sunday closest to All Saint's Day and Brad helped Samuel participate this year, by going up with him.  The other boys processed in by themselves and were very excited.

After Mass we attended our home schooling All Saint's Day party which was a wonderful time for all of us. Lots of great food, lots of fun games and candy and of course kids in costumes.  A few pictures of my little boys all dressed up.

Today, the actual solemnity was a laid back day.  We went to Mass this morning (in costume again) and then spent the day at home relaxing and doing school work.

I wish my camera battery wasn't dead last night because I could have gotten some classic pictures of Matthias and Augustin.  In our living room we have an older couch that I let the boys play on, rather than the good couches that they have to simply sit on.  Before last night I had always thought that the WWF wrestling you see on television was made up by adult men who had a lot of time on their hands to make things look dramatic.  Now I know the truth....they just sat back and watched two boys ages 3.5 years and 5.5 years old wrestle around.  We had it all from jumping off the arm of the couch onto the other child, the jump and kick in the back move, the jump down, then back up while the other tries to kick you move and my favorite would be the knee jump onto the chest of the other.  And possibly the kick to the head (which made me cringe I will admit) just for some added drama.

I know we are probably terrible parents, but we sat back and laughed as we watched them and both decided this is where the WWF gets their wrestling moves from.  Augustin is a tough kid b/c he took the brunt of the "abuse", but was laughing the entire time and would taunt Matthias with "You missed me that time."  It was all fun and games until Matthias slipped off the arm of the couch and hit his belly on the padded arm of the couch.  Not even an aggressive touch from Augustin; he's not a tough guy and we know that.

It's that time of year again.  It's hard to believe we're already half way through October and moving into November, the leaves are changing and wearing a sweatshirt of jacket is almost essential right now.  And all of that means it's time for the annual Linder family Pumpkin Quest.   So, Saturday afternoon we headed for the mountains for an overnight at at hotel and then off to enjoy our day eating and finding our pumpkins Sunday.  Saturday was cold, windy and rainy, especially as we headed north.  This was a huge blessing though because we saw the biggest and possibly the closest rainbow ever. It literally went right over the highway and we drove under it. I've never seen anything like it before; you could basically see where each end touched the ground.

The only thing that could have made the drive nicer was if the leaves were still looking good.  Unfortunately we missed peak this year and most of the trees were brown or leafless by the time we got north.  Not much color on the mountains.

Our first stop Saturday was St. Rose of Lima parish for Mass where we were pleasantly surprised to see a priest we know through Cursillo.  He is now assigned up north and we were happy to be able to see him and chat for awhile after Mass.  We then headed back to the hotel to change before getting dinner at a local diner.  Game time was then in order before heading off to bed with anticipation of good food and pumpkins the next morning.

Our day began as all Pumpkin Quests do with breakfast at Polly's Pancakes in Sugar Hill.  Everyone had a wonderful breakfast of pancakes and hot chocolate (for the kids) and of course and omelet for me since I don't like pancakes.

After eating it was time for our annual picture on Trot Trot the horse outside

Augustin, being Augustin, decided that standing on the horse was a wonderful idea.
 

Waiting to get back into the van and head to our next stop

A view of Mt Lafayette with snow on the peak

Next stop...Harman's Cheese Shop where the boys each got to pick out a small item.  Augustin of course picked out yet ANOTHER purple moose, named "Matt the Moose".  It is now a tradition I guess since we've now got 4 of the same moose and he loves them all.  He won't even consider picking out something else.  Grant got his traditional 6 pack of locally made pop in various flavors.

Then it was time to head to Bath, NH to the oldest general store in the country where the kids each get to pick out 10 pieces of candy and spend time sitting on the porch of the store.

Then it's time to cross over the covered bridge

This is also the time that the youngest typically falls asleep for the only nap of the day and I almost always end up spending some time sitting in the van while said baby sleeps.  True to form, Samuel fell asleep.  I wasn't upset, it gave me time to sit and do nothing knowing that the rest of the day was going to be busy.  So Brad brought me a big cup of hot apple cider and I spent the time listening to a Glenn Miller cd definitely warm and enjoyable.  And as a bonus, Samuel slept for just over a hour which was much needed.

Finally, it was time to get pumpkins; the anticipated event of the day and the photo-op I look forward to more than any other. I love getting pictures of the boys sitting with the pumpkins.  This years was slightly interesting because they had chickens walking around the pumpkins this year and even though we have chickens of our own, Samuel was determined that the chickens were more important than a picture.  So the first attempt was really more of Grant pinning him down, while he screamed and everyone else tried to look happy.  After  few attempts I gave up and let all the kids just go look at the animals, hoping beyond hope that we could capture some good pictures later on.  Thankfully after looking at the cows, chickens and other various farm animals the kids were all more willing to look at pumpkins.

Samuel headed right over to the group of pumpkins and I had the other boys fill in around him rather than try to move him some where else.  They all did well and I got some really cute pictures

After the group picture it was time to pick out pumpkins; always a fun time for all.  And of course a great opportunity for me to take pictures.

Brad helping the boys find good pumpkins

Samuel and Uncle Scot

And of course Baby Girl on her first pumpkin quest
 
The rest of the day is always without pictures for some reason.  We did head down to Hanover, NH and then over into Vermont to eat sticky buns and King Arthur Flour and then go to the book store near Dartmouth College before making our way over to Lui Lui's for dinner and then finally heading home.  It was a wonderful day for all of us. Great weather, lots of great food and fun.

 Not much makes me laugh out loud when sitting in the living room alone, but this blog does.  I saw a link to it on another site today and had to check it out.  It's called Bad Vestments and the name says it all.  It is worth checking out.  Just make sure you aren't eating or drinking something while looking at the pictures, but you may end up choking when you start laughing.

I have a lot more worthwhile to share, which I hope to do later today; it's been a very busy couple of weeks.

After a fairly dry and nice summer, we've had a couple of weeks with what seems like endless rain. I know that is an exaggeration, but we've had more days of clouds and rain than days of sun.  I told Brad this morning that I don't care if it's warm, I just want to see the sun.  It definitely feels like fall around here and I've been craving things like pumpkin bread.  It has also been a window into winter with the kids in the house more than outside.  It may be a long winter, especially for Augustin and I.  He has so much energy to get out and there is just no way after spending entire days outside this summer, that he can do that in any good way in the house.  I'm hoping he enjoys the snow this winter because he is going to have to go outside every day.

I picked up 4 more pumpkins yesterday at the local orchard to bake and turn into pie/bread filling.  I am going to start cooking those down today and I may actually use one batch to make bread rather than freeze.  I think pumpkin bread would be a great addition to our rainy day.  Tomorrow is the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, so I also have cupcakes to bake for our cupcake rosary.  Nothing like a little baking to warm up the kitchen.

I've been really bad about getting pictures taken of my belly this time.  I finally had Brad take one before leaving for work this morning.  I figure it's about time and at this rate we may get one more on the way to the hospital.  So here I am, only 8 weeks (56 days to go).  For those of you wondering that means that Thanksgiving is only 56 days away!!!

I'm not very big this time, I'm thinking baby girl isn't going to be a 9 pounder like Samuel and Augustin.  Maybe more around 7 pounds. I guess we'll know in a few weeks.

I really want to know where the month went.  Last time I remember we were starting school "early" and it was August.  Then we had our official first day of school after Aaron, Beth and the kids visited.  We did celebrate Our Lady's birthday and the Exaltation of the Cross and Padre Pio's feast day and now it's just days away from October and I feel like I missed something.  Let's see if I can summarize our last few weeks.

We celebrated Our Lady's birthday and the Exaltation of the Cross, both of which I wrote about.  We also celebrated Padre Pio's feast day, which unfortunately was without photos.  I know the kids will be disappointed.  We have a wonderful devotion to Padre Pio in this house that started with Parker when he was possibly 3 years old and it continues to this day.  When he heard his feast day was coming up, he begged me to make the "cappuccino" pudding desert that he loved last year.  So he got that and Italian sausage and pasta for dinner.

We had our family gathering for the month of September and talked about the Triumph of the Cross and the importance of the cross in our lives and our faith.  Each family decorated their own cross and then the kids paraded around the house with their crosses while the adults all sang Lift High the Cross

We've also done apple picking, a fall favorite for us.  Our weekends are very busy, so we picked an afternoon and Mamma went with us and we had a great time.  I love apple picking with the cool weather; this particular afternoon was overly warm and without a breeze.  Notice some of the boys are in shorts. I don't think I've ever picked apples on such a warm day.

September also marks the end of the garden. I always have mixed feelings about this.  I love the garden, especially the harvesting aspect of it.  I love seeing all the food coming out and knowing that a lot of it will provide us with food throughout part of the winter.  We had a particularly good garden this year.  I spent many, many, many afternoons and hours picking tomatoes this summer, trying to rid the garden of squash bugs, harvesting green beans, summer squash, lettuce and cucumbers.  We had a fair amount of corn, potatoes and squash as well, with a few pots of onions too.

Brad and Augustin cut down the corn stalks, making the garden look absolutely empty and I knew the gardening season was over.  Augustin is so strong, he always amazes me with what he can do.  Here he is using the large "nippers" to cut down corn stalks and did without really needing help.  He's such a hard worker too and eagerly offered to help.

Grant took some time to give the boys a tractor ride that same afternoon.

With the end of gardening came time to decide what to do with the rest of the tomatoes.  I have spent hours picking tomatoes this summer.  We had 6 cherry tomato plants and I wish I could have tallied up how many I've picked off the plants this year.  Brad figures I averaged about 75 a day from the beginning of August until this past weekend when I finally went and picked what was left; green and all.  This past weekend I came in with two very large colanders full of cherry tomatoes.  So in the past 7 weeks we've gotten well over 1000 cherry tomatoes, most of which got eaten as daily snacks by the boys.

Dad also picked the remaining tomatoes off the regular tomato plants.  We ended up with approximately 60 pounds of green tomatoes and several more pounds of red tomatoes to end the growing season.  The filled a cooler; this is with about a 1/3 of them already taken out and canned into salsa.

So Mom and I spent last weekend canning all kinds of things; about 11 hours on Saturday and another 4 hours on Sunday. A couple weeks ago we canned 13 quarts of stewed tomatoes and this past weekend we added to that by canning....

15 quarts of halved/quartered (depending on size) red tomatoes
26 quarts of green tomato salsa
10 quarts of pickled green cherry tomatoes

A couple pictures of the halved tomatoes, half of the salsa and unfortunately no pictures of the pickled cherry tomatoes

We still have approximately 20 pounds left which will be turned into another 13 quarts of salsa (pictured above) and hopefully some delicious green tomato chutney.  That is what my tomorrow entails.  In previous canning days we've canned green tomato relish, applesauce and bread and butter pickles since the middle of July.  Almost nothing has gone to waste, it's either been eaten, frozen or canned this year.  Our basement shelves are looking great.

All of this on top of school, which is going amazingly well. Grant and Parker are both really enjoying school, especially Grant.  Matthias is doing extremely well and has started to read a couple of simple books, is working very hard on his hand writing and addition facts.  All in all, it's been a great and very busy month.  Tomorrow is the feast of the Guardian Angels so we'll have another wonderful dinner celebration and hopefully I'll get pictures taken and uploaded quickly, if not I promise I'll get to them....after I finish the rest of the canning and freezing of the food we have sitting in the kitchen just waiting for someone to tackle the projects.

Real Catholic TV has some great videos that are worth checking out. A friend sent this one to me today and I thought it was worth posting.

If you can't get the video below to work, you can access it through this direct link.

We've had a busy month with the start of school and we seem to have gotten off to a slower start than I would have liked celebrating feast days.  We took time last week to celebrate the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin by attending Mass and then having a delicious cake after dinner.  I kept it simple...bunt cake with blue icing.

The boys thought Mary needed flowers so Grant quickly ran outside and cut some beautiful flowers for the center of the cake.

One of my favorite pictures was taken that night of Grant and Matthias enjoying cake

Samuel wasn't really into the cake at all

But Parker and Augustin enjoyed theirs

Then this week was the Exaltation of the Cross, a feast day we have thoroughly enjoyed in the past.  We had a simple lunch time feast after reading Chapter 15 in the Gospel of Mark and discussing why the cross is so important to us.  I posted the readings, meanings behind the foods on my blog last year; to read you can find it here.  It was a fun lunch and the kid really remembered a lot from last year.

Next week we're going to celebrate the feast day of Padre Pio, followed by the feast of the Arc Angels before the end of the month.  I'm going to try to do a better job with the pictures.

We started with some light schooling at the end of August, but didn't officially start school until September 7th.  We spent the prior two weeks learning our new routine, chores and getting a slower start on the school year.  We've never done it this way before, but it worked out very well for us.  By the time we jumped into school with two feet, we were already set on chores and used to the routine, so it went very well.  Of course, being the first day of school, pictures had to be taken.

Augustin eating breakfast

Matthias emptying the dishwasher

A group shot of all the boys before heading off to their desks.

After school we headed outside for some fresh air.  They all enjoyed a snack of apples; Samuel really enjoyed his.

Grant proudly showing off his newly stacked wood. It's quite a pile he has going and is very proud of it; it's one of his favorite afternoon activities.  We'll have great bon fires this winter.

Just hanging out