Some old and some new

I'm the worst at getting pictures off of my point and shoot (aka not so snazzy) camera. Here are some from the last few months. Oops. They are in reverse order (because I'm having a fight with blogspot about importing images--sorry).

A Wednesday morning "hike" at a local bike/walk/running path that is somewhat wooded and near the lake.

We had to find some nice sticks.

Then we used said sticks to fish leaves out of mud puddles.

One day Henry and I went hiking at another place in town to find some bugs.

A month ago or so there was an event in town where streets were shut down to cars and open for bicyclist, runner, etc. It was really interesting to ride where it is usually very unfriendly to bikes. Derek and Henry were doing the sidewalk drawing on the normally busy street. It was a great event with music, kids activities, obstacle courses, etc.

Side note: we finally have capabilities to take decent video again so we hope to post some soon.

Early fall fun

We are enjoying the wonderful weather and the many activities going on this fall so far. Here's just a sampling.

Running. Now Henry is enjoying running on the sidewalk for no reason in particular.

Really enjoying the views of the capital while at the market.

Was very interested in the camera lens because he saw his reflection.

The bounty from the garden on Saturday. I'm so excited for my first ever red pepper. I've tried in the past but failed. This is the first but more are on there way.

We went to a parade this weekend for a neighborhood festival. This is why Henry is now rolling around on a big red ball and trying to perform crazy stunts on it.

And he's also wearing gloves (aka his socks on his hands) since all good wacky wheelers wear gloves??

Same parade. Very cool bubble car and person on stilts with a bird puppet. The puppet was quite amazing. This parade always feels like I'm living in a Dr. Seuss book.

Henry was very excited about the parade. We actually watched it once and then moved to another spot to watch it again. It is quite a short parade but never disappoints.

2 of Henry's favorite things

1. Things that match:

Items that are identical (notice two Henry trains), things that match in color, even words that rhyme are a match to him. It's quite interesting to hear his take on things that match.

2. Smoothies.

Henry likes to have a smoothie for snack almost every night before bed. I'm not sure when we started this routine but it's definitely an important part of the evening.

Sauced!

Today we started at the farmers market by purchasing about 40 lbs of local tomatoes and about 2 lbs of onions with one goal in mind. Make and freeze as much tomato sauce as we can. I thought it was something worth documenting. So here you go:

1. Tomatoes

Tina doing the processing in the back yard. This definitely saved us from a large mess in the kitchen.

2. Blending

3. Blended tomatoes + tastey herbs and spices (this was the first of 2 batches)

4. Stirring.

5. Cooking...after two hours this reduced the sauce from 10 quarts to about 7.

6. First batch cooling on the counter. When all said and done we will have about 14 quarts of sauce. Of course we still need to get some more freezer containers.