Soups On

What is more tasty during this rainy, cool, and crisp fall season than hot soup. I find myself desiring that when I am thinking about what to make for dinner. Soup I think is a big comfort for me when the seasons change and it starts to cool down. I recall hot chili and chicken noodle soup growing up and I begin to crave after such warm delights. Oh yeah that is exactly what I made for dinner two of the nights last week. I am just thankful that Michael and our housemates have not entirely caught on to the abundance of soups I have made, but eat it graciously.

Tonights special was potato soup. When I started thinking about dinner I went through what we had in our fridge. I remembered buying bacon and we had some left and then I thought a-ha I will make potato soup since today was especially rainy and cool.So tasty we even had seconds! What better way to warm up our insides!

So if you have any favorite soup recipes you would like to share I would be more than happy have them to add to my collection of soups. So heres hoping you find that comfort food that warms you up this during this fanastic fall season!

For Anna and Josie

Josie and Anna, Maia is not the only one who likes to use your purple bumbo chair:






The kitten's name is Sufi. She lives with us (along with our cat, Meko). Her owners are Clint and Merodie, who also live with us.

If you notice, in the background is our pumpkin. While we did not get a pumpkin this year at the pumpkin patch to carve, we did get one to eat! It's a blue hubbard, and, well, actually its a squash, not a pumpkin. But they look the same to me.

I tried to get a video of Sufi playing in the bumbo, because she was spinning around in it in circles chasing her tail, but when I grabbed the video camera, she kept running out of the bumbo after only 2 seconds of video. Oh well, maybe next time.

Oh the many faces of Maia

Upon request I am posting some smiling pictures of Maia along with some of her other funny faces that make us laugh. She has some fun lip action going on and I find it hard to resist kissing those chubby cheeks. So enjoy this series:

The End.

Pumpkin Patch

Its that time of year when the leaves change colors, the smell of chimney smoke, the wearing of sweaters and light jackets, and the sounds of children playing at the pumpkin patch. We got to experience the pumpkin patch a week ago with the Mosers and Huffmans. This was the first time we did this with our own little one. Often we are the couple without the kids and we get to play and run with other peoples kids, but this time we have our own kiddo to watch after. Although she is not the age to run around or even enjoy the pumpkin patch, we still had to make sure to meet her needs as well. Besides that, we had fun watching the kiddos who can run around do so and Michael got his chance at playing with them as well (he is very good at that).

As fun as Pumpkin patches are, they can also be sad too! Well maybe only when you are hungry and your only way to communicate is to cry.

Ees a Quill

Katie was asking about quilts, so I figured I'd make a post about baby quilts. This post will exclude the amazing quilt Julie made for Maia (thanks Julie!), since I have yet to take any pictures of it. But here's two other baby quilts:

I love the chili peppers!

The back is a little hard to see in this, but it has farm animals all over it:

The first is the one Jeanette made for Maia. Isn't it beautiful? She learned a lot by making it, and could not have done it without Ginya's constant coaching. Most of the fabric either came from Ginya, or was purchased by her. The border was also difficult to decide upon? What color? Jeanette had lots of input from Joanne and Ginya, but finally decided to go with one of her favorite colors, brown (Incidentally, making the quilt much like our wedding colors: brown and many bright colors). This was of course after Ginya said sternly, "I will NOT let anyone put purple on that quilt!" when purple was being considered as the border. Which brings us to the second quilt, the one that Ginya made. Ginya said Jeanette's hankering after bright colors made her decide to make a brighter quilt than she normally would. And guess what color she decided to use for the border...

Ginya made her quilt for another of her many great-grandkids (besides Maia), and boy will that girl be blessed by the skill and love of her great-grandma!

Trip to Oklahoma

I took Maia on her first trip away from Portland to the great state of Oklahoma. It was a spontaneous trip spurred on by a conversation Michael and I had about visiting friends. He suggested I go and I thought that would be fun and found out that it was homecoming at the college I graduated this past weekend. We quickly got some tickets (standby), made arrangements and packed our bags. We left on Friday and returned Monday. Maia did amazing on the flights. Luckily for both flights we didn't have to change aircrafts so we just stayed on the plane during our stops. A good way to guarantee our seats thats for sure! We went to the small town of Bartlesville and stayed with some good friends, Josh and Brianna. While we were there we were able to see many friends I went to college with and also some I grew up with in SD. We had a lot of fun. I also had fun showing off Maia. I think she enjoyed, but probably felt a little over stimulated by the end. She sure made some connections. Here is a few pictures of her new friends!This is Jenn, as you can see Maia is striking a pose!

This is Josh, we stayed with him and his wife Brianna.And here is Brianna, Maia seemed to take a liking to her. She seemed to calm down a lot with her!

Also we went to a pumpkin patch. Well we didn't make it out to the patch, but we did make it by some pumpkins.

Here is a cute little bear to end the post!

More videos of the cousins riding.

This first ones a bit bouncy, but then again, if you like bouncy videos, its right up your alley.

The second one is another one of the two kiddos-- Jack is pretty excited to be a real cowboy, just like his dad was growing up.

Okay, and I had to include this last one just because of who is watching Jack at the end of the video.

Us humans weren't the only ones interested in that little boy up on the horse!

Jack horsebackriding

I'm sure there are great pictures elsewhere of Jack on the horse. However, since we were the ones with the video camera (thanks Jeff!), I suppose it falls to us to post a video of him riding.

A real cowboy and cowgirl

Last weekend we had a cowboy and cowgirl come visit us out on the farm.

Airplane Ride

Anyone for an airplane ride?

Squeaks

And here's some squeaks for your viewing enjoyment. Be warned, they are a little far between.