The other day Aspen and I joined our friends Danielle and Olivia for a romp in the peach trees. We rode out into the countryside and picked our way to paradise. Boy do I have it bad for fall!
It was a beautiful, cool morning, with a great breeze. When I got home all I wanted to do was go to another farm and pick more fruit so I could go home and bake all day.
Danielle's from Virginia, so of course on the way home all we could do was talk about East Coast pumpkin patches, Halloween, and on and on. Oh, and the apple cider. And the baked goods at the farms, which they don't have as much out here.
Okay, enough about Boston falls. It was beautiful where we were the other day! Green, rolling hills, and farms every which way. And apple picking season just around the corner.....
It was so fun having the girls there to play together. On the way home they just sang and laughed and joked around, like a couple of schoolgirls. So cute.
All right, so now I've got a bunch of peaches ripening on my counter....so what next? Hopefully I'm going to be trying my hand at canning. It's a little intimidating for me to think about, but come on; I can't let all these peaches go to waste!

This is my Roo doing the dishes. Notice anything new...in the caboose area? Something pink?
If you said underpants, you're right!
She's been great; I'm so proud of her! She does however have problems with not wanting to wipe or wash her hands, and then running all over the house with bare buttocks while her underpants are around her ankles.
Until she biffs it and decides to let me pull up her pants. Silly girl!

Grandmother's Jumper

After my grandmother had passed away my dad gave me her wedding dress. Just the other day Aspen was playing with the bag he had given me the dress in, and pulled out two little jumpers.

I had never seen them before! Whose had they been? I wondered who had made them, since they were obviously homemade. I called my dad, and he explained to me that they had belonged to my grandmother, and were made by her mother, my great-grandmother Bessie. They're about 80 years old.I've been marvelling at the pattern; they're both made from one piece of fabric that wraps around the bottom and buttons at the back. So simple! As you can see they're not in the best shape. Aspen was happy to model one of them for me.
Anyway I'm so glad to have these; what a treasure to pass down to Aspen one day. And with them will be these photos of her wearing them.

Two weekends ago we took a trip down to Utah, our old stomping ground. Eric's brother, Danny, graduated from BYU with his master's. We hadn't been to Provo (where we met and had our first apartment) for about 4 years, so it brought back so many memories! It was a lot of fun.
I'm sharing this photo for honesty's sake. Please try to erase it out of your mind now that you've seen it. I thought I was doing pretty well weight-wise until I saw this! But oh well, it's worth it.
While we were out there we went to a Jack Johnson concert, and it was great because Aspen's a huge fan of his. I think she enjoyed it as much as we did. Isn't she cute?

Yesterday was heaven. It rained, as in poured, all day long. It was about 63 degrees, and for this enlarged woman that was very very nice. Wicked nice. I can say wicked because I lived in Boston for 3 years, and that's what they always say. Wicked. Hey, I have rights to it.
Aspen and I threw on our fleece p.j. bottoms, our non-matching shirts, and clashing hoodies. We looked awesome in our daytime lounge clothes. I made us some hot chocolate, we played dice, and did all of this while......
can you guess? Listening to Christmas music. You know, even though it looked like winter outside, it still felt wrong. Listening to Christmas music in August. I missed the whole Christmas in July I guess; I had my chance and now it's too late. Ah well, give me another two months and it'll feel so right.

After several weeks of work, we've finally finished the backyard, for now. It feels so good! No more weeds the size of a tree or ugly dirt that turns to mud. There in the distance is the flowering pear tree that we finally bought, since I've been coveting one for months. Thank you Costco for providing a cheap one for us.
This is our gravel pit, where next year we will be placing our planter boxes for the garden. Right now it's just an oasis for little girls that want to pick up rocks and throw them in the grass.
We'd eventually like to have a fire pit here in this corner, but I told Eric he should take a break for now and let his back rest. It sure does make a difference, though. We actually come outside in the evenings when it's nice and cool, instead of hide in our living room.

There in the corner is the maple tree that we planted in the Spring. I can't wait for Fall for it to change colors and throw some yellow onto our grass.