Fish out of water!

Benjamin is definitely our little fish!  I don't know what happened in the womb but if there's water around he'll find it!  We wanted to get him into swim lessons, but didn't make it during the summer months.  Fortunately, my health club offered them indoors so we signed him up for a Mom and child class.  He absolutely loved it!  If I wasn't careful, he would try to jump in before I did, which was kind of scary.  It was fun to see how much he enjoyed it and great for me as well.  With Alys at this age it was more of a nightmare.  I hope he continues to enjoy it and who knows, maybe someday we'll have a swimmer on our hands.

Goal!

Ethan has been enjoying soccer all month.  He has been playing with the Golden Eagles.  This has been his first run at actually playing on a team.  He has participated in clinics before but no actual games.  He's probably one of the youngest on his team but has enjoyed it and fit right in.  He's learned a lot and has scored a goal or two during the season.  I think his favorite position to play though is goalie.  Whenever his coach asks him to cover the goal he tends to not want to move down the field, as they don't usually play with a goalie.  Even though we've had a few cold, windy games and practices it's been fun to watch him play.  We look forward to the spring season!

Our Little Ballerina

About a month or two ago we signed Alys up for a dance class.  When I first talked to her about it she was adamant that she was not going to go!  I went and watched the first day and her teacher, Mrs. Macie was great.  She had fun things to play with while they were waiting to get started and she helped her find the right size ballet and tap shoes.  Now she loves it and she loves to wear her ballerina outfit.  She is learning ballet, tap and tumbling.  She will have a little recital coming up in December and we're excited to see what she's learned as she twirls in her cute little costume.

Canning, what's that?

Well, it's been about a month since I've talked about anything and my list is piling high so I thought I'd start with some canning.  When I was a kid I remember every year at the end of summer it was the dreaded time for canning!  That meant peeling pears, apples, peaches, making tomato sauce, shucking corn and cutting it off the cob and whatever else you could think of.  Some items always seemed to take forever!  Since I moved away, stopped in Arizona for a couple of years, stayed in Texas too long, got married and had kids; I kind of forgot how to do some of it.  So this year I thought I would take a stab at it just so I knew how to do it and there also seems to be a great abundance of fresh produce in the area.  Plus, we were also fortunate enough to share a garden with my brother and his family and my parents.  That was wonderful!  Here's some highlights of us working in the garden and the beautiful and tasty peaches that I canned.  They are a "Summer Lady" peach and very tasty.  I even grilled some of them and that was fabulous!!  Sorry, forgot to take pictures of that but definitely will next time.