Ella at 3

Since there are only two weeks left that Ella is 3 I wanted to post this little book she made at school about herself! It's pretty self explanatory and the poem on the last page gets me choked up every time!

Game helper

We love this thing. Chris bought it at a local game store and it ROCKS. As Ella is adverstising well, its a card holder for little kids. It has a nice chunky handle and kids can easily put all their cards in it and they really don't fall out. It is very tricky for tiny hands to hold onto cards so this is a perfect solution.
(by the way, Ella is an Uno champion, she seriously needs no help and totally understands how to play and plays well! We're impressed.)

Pumkpin Carving

We collected pumpkins from various fall outings over the last couple weeks and ended up with a perfect bunch of 3-a small, medium, and large (which is what Ella likes to point out our family has one of each size-thank God I'm the medium). I LOVE carving pumpkins and scooping out the goop and roasting the seeds and lighting the pumpkins outside. It's all part of the tradition of fall for me and we've been doing it every year with Ella too. This year Chris added a great idea for a way for Ella to see deep into the pumpkin while scooping it out :-)

Final 2009 Garden Update

Well the first Annual Heiliger Garden project was a success! Chris definitely led the project and did almost all the work but Ella and I were good waterers and pickers and eaters :-) We'd definitely do some things differently next year but we'll certainly do it again!
A couple days ago we did one of what I think will be our last "harvests" of the year since it's starting to get cold.

Here's a broccoli plant! We started these from seeds back in April and just picked the first ones this week!!!



Our fall harvest has switched from lots of tomatoes and zuchinni to our crazy, mishapen pumpkin, butternut squash (which I LOVE), peppers, and broccoli! It's SO much fun to pick things out of your back yard and cook them up for dinner!

*So we'll remember, here are things to do differently next year
-grow more basil
-less random herbs and vegetables (bc they either didn't grow and if they did we didn't eat them)
-zuchinni sounds good but we don't really like it enough to have more than 1 plant-they grow back when you pick them
-not as many tomatoes (we had about 6 this year) and more heirloom, colored varieties (the yellow ones were really good this year)
-Not as many peppers and more of other colors (we had 6 and couldn't eat the peppers or tomatoes fast enough and a bunch died on the vine)
-try to grow strawberries
-start the butternut squash later so they can be harvested in fall rather than all summer also
-compost all year

Shout out to Pastor Dan

We go to a phenomenal church. I will not give you any lengthy story about the amazing worship, or how God's Spirit moves there, or even about the diversity there we love so much. What I will tell you is that you know your church is cool when your pastor sends you this email of picture he took last week. It might take you a second to see why it's hilarious (and you might have to zoom in)...

Love it.