Family, The Bestest Thing Ever!!

 Family is the bestest thing ever!!! Okay, that's bad grammar but it's true. One look into these cute little grand daughter's eyes and my whole world lights up. This morning, we ran around finding clothes for dress up. This week is homecoming at the high school and the grade school participates by dressing up too. Today's theme is western days.

 And last weekend we were blessed to have our oldest daughter with us. The grand daughters think their Aunt Toni is the best and well, she is. We reminisced by picking pumpkins. The grand kids loved the variation of an Easter egg hunt as they scrambled amongst the wilting vines looking for brights spots of red or orange.

Our daughters and us laughed as we remembered when they were little, shivering in the garden dressing up in coats, hats, and mittens as the whole family hurried to gather in the harvest before the night's frost destroyed it.

It might not have been the best memory for them and they might have much preferred the picking the garden in their shorts as the grand kids were doing but frost has waited patiently for the garden to come to fruition. Maybe not everything is done but we wouldn't of had much if Jack Frost had arrived on his usual schedule the beginning of September so I'm very grateful to the Lord.

When we finished picking pumpkins, we moved on to picking the apples off our small trees. Then yesterday, I picked three and a half - five gallon buckets of tomatoes and a bowl of zucchini, and more peppers, and... and... It was just in time too, as we woke up to 28 degrees Fahrenheit. Br....

I've still potatoes to dig and dried corn to pick, and buckwheat, and a slim maybe on dried beans along with a hope full harvest of  sunflowers seeds bu they can wait as I deal with that which we've already picked.

All this harvesting makes we feel a kin to the pioneers. We are so blessed though that what we raise doesn't have to be all the we survive on. How ever did they do it?

But work and no play makes for a dull boy they say and so first, last weekend, we had a bit of fun.

 Our oldest daughter, whose very creative, drew butterflies with the girls and they posed as the body in the middle of the wings.

 And earlier in the week we finally got around to taking the girls fishing. Sh.... don't tell them they were catching tiny little trash fish because they thought it was really something.

Our middle grand daughter's favorite part was digging for worms. The fishing she wanted to skip for playing in the park but after her two year old little sister had caught two, she decided she was being out done and caught two herself before calling it quits.

It didn't take long for we'd cast the line out into the pond and as the kids slowly reeled it in, the Blue Gill near the shallows nabbed on to the wiggling worms and the kids were guaranteed a tiny fish with every cast. Yup, it's a real ego booster. Just right for those with very short attention spans.