Weekend

Some (low-key) weekend highlights from September 8th/9th:

Buckeyes football... every Saturday.

Be afraid.  Be very afraid.

Pretty sure this is not even a football stance.  More like the cross country starting line that I hail from.  Haha! ;)  I need my hands out to prepare for tackle, I think?

Just go ahead and overlook this ridiculousness.  :)

We harvested several quarts of tomatoes, a bunch of red peppers and still a couple straggling cucumbers.

Craig got a start on tearing off the old house siding.  This was supposed to be his "summer project".  Nothing like waiting till there are two weeks left in "summer".  ;)  Now he's down to the wire, working on it in the evenings and on weekend days that he's not working a second job (side work with an electrician).

You can see in this picture that he cut down those God awful bush/trees/whatever-you-call-them that used to line the side of the house.  They'd been a horrific eye-sore on the house for years and Craig kept insisting they were "making a come back".  Still not sure what we're going to do instead, but it's gonna' have to be above ground because the root system from the old trees is probably pretty extensive and reaching under the driveway... which is why they were just cut off and only dug slightly below ground to remove.  Maybe some large potted flowers or decorative rocks?

The kids entertained themselves while I got some cleaning done.

And we tried out our new hot air popcorn popper.  Love that thing!  We have never been big popcorn eaters, simply because I don't prefer the microwaveable stuff and I'm clueless as to how to do it on the stovetop.  But Will requested popcorn last month and I got to thinking I should see what's out there for appliances.  This was under $20 and got excellent reviews on Amazon.  It's ridiculously easy - enough for the kids to prep themselves - and then I just plug it in and make them scooch back to watch.  The inside, as well as the air coming out of the shoot, gets pretty hot, but the outside is not hot touch and they kids didn't even try.  Within two to three minutes, it's done!  Just like the microwave stuff, except it doesn't use any oil or anything else.  They are completely enamored with this new snack that we have readily available now and I love that it's healthy and high in fiber.  I definitely want to play around with fun recipes to create both sweet and savory toppings, but the kids are happy to devour it completely plain too!  This has been our go-to afterschool snack, paired with a pickle for Will (he's addicted to pickles - we recently had seven different kinds of pickles in our house!) and/or some kind of garden veggie.

More siding work.  Craig really dislikes the DEstruction part.  He's looking forward to the actual putting on of the new stuff.  Poor Sophie was in tears when she first saw him doing this and heard some of the banging and ripping sounds.  She said "daddy's breaking our house!" with such a worried little face until I reassured her that he was actually fixing it and making it better.

And that's it!  I love when we don't have weekend plans.  :)