Gale Munchkins

Just a few pics from our Halloween this year... You of course have the pumpkins....thankfully, most of the girls stuck with the standard face. Kaylee was the only one insisting on something different, but when you have 4 pumpkins to get done, faces were encouraged ! Luckily, because we carved at Michael's parents home, we had David & Grandpa Gale's help. Kaylee did another pumpkin at her art class, so we ended up with 5. (Hmmm...I wonder if Michael let the candles burn all night...) Mikenna didn't have much interest in what we were doing. Mostly wandered from pumpkin to pumkin. Kassi worked with David, Kiera helped scrape (and scrape and scrape) various pumpkins. Kaylee worked on "poking" her design out, after she helped Joe seperate his seeds from gunk from his HUMUNGOUS pumpkin. Here we are at Great-Grandma's after we'd Trunk-or-Treated at the Union building. We were then off to trek around our neighborhood. Grandma Gale put together Kaylee's cos...

Thursday night, Jaime (Stacy's sister), the girls and I, drove up to Yakima to watch Disney on Ice, Princess Wishes!! The girls absolutely LOVED it!! Mikenna's eyes were riveted to the skaters! Her little hand would wave & wave as the characters waved to us...she even knew the names of the princesses as they came out on the ice. It was fun & I enjoyed chatting with Jaime in the van...My camera died 1/2 way through the show, but here are some pics...Stacy & Emma were also there with some other friends...maybe they'll have some better pictures to share...

My sis-in-law, Stacy threw this way fun party the other night...and my other sis-in-law, Allison blogged it!! Rather than repeat repeat... go here to read all about it!! THANKS STACY FOR THROWING A FUN PARTY AND INVITING US !!

with the four girls... at least that's what it has seemed liked over the past few weeks... I have nothing to complain about...except the girls...they really miss their daddy...I at least see and chat with him when he gets home late or early in the morning...but they, especially Kiera , don't see him as much... ???WHY??? you may ask...well, October is sprinkler blowout month for us!! What is this, you may ask...well, for those of us living in Kennewick , once the irrigation water is turned off, sprinkler systems then need to be winterized by blowing any left over water out of the pipes. Once freezing weather sets in, if water isn't blown out, there is danger of freezing/bursting pipes...which are not fun to fix! (Mike fixed several this past spring.) Sooooo ....Mike & his dad and brothers...pass out fliers, call previous customers, set up a packed appointment schedule, rent these compressors, and drive around--blowing out sprinkler lines!! Mike & Co. have been doing ...

Kassidy looked more like me by 3%. Kiera looked more like me by 4% (It sure did take a long time to decide too.) Kaylee looked more like me by 14%. Now, the program said it compared facial features and etc...so....

We are DONE canning!! 119 Q + several other various jars (ran out of the quarts) of beautiful purple grape juice are now on the kitchen counter...about 12 hours of canning in all!! Well, actually it was more 9 hours of canning and 3 hours of clean-up...that means cleaning the garage, ALL equipment, moping the floor, cleaning counters, vaccuming etc. etc. AHCK it was a LOT of clean-up...maybe because we were so tired!! Especially my parents...they were in there up to their elbows graping and juicing and everything!! They probably never expected to be canning this much with all their kids married...but now we live with them...and happy are we !! Plus, how can you turn away free grapes from a vineyard that hasn't been picked yet? (Besides other local vineyards were charging $0.20/lb you pick grapes: so that would have been $120 in grapes! We've canned 600 lbs this year.) Well, we couldn't turn away such a sweet deal...and you should have seen the gleam in my mom's eye a...

So...friends informed us earlier this week of some free grapes at a vineyard that the owner was just going to "let go"...last year he'd sold the grapes to some business or something...this year he didn't care....so, he was letting anyone come and pick for FREE!! Well, my mom and I couldn't pass up the free grapes...plus the fact that we didn't even pick down 1/3 of a row (which took less than an hour) and we were able to can 41 jars of juice!! Barely 1/4 of the vineyard has been picked so far!! I think we are headed back on Saturday. Grape juice anyone???

Our room has become the family "hospice" center. These past few days Kiera & Kassidy have slept on our floor because of icky coughs, headaches, and owie necks. (Also a few nightmares.) Of course you already have Kaylee (her bed is to the side of the room) in there...(btw...we are completely off the prednisone now and have had only a few days of achy joints where she can't walk...keep us in your prayers)...and then Mikenna...who we did have in her own crib and everything, until the 2nd trip we'd made to the hospital...at least she hasn't gone back to her binky~right??? Anyhow...Currently we are back to Kiera & Kassi upstairs in their room, hopefully Kaylee will follow soon and then the baby!! The pitfalls of have the master on the main....

EIGHT YEARS!! Wow!! It does go by fast...10 years from now, I'll remember sitting here typing about my Kaylee and how quickly time has gone by...and then it'll be 10 more years!! Anyhow...I love her! We love her! Mikenna LOVES her!! Simple as that! Here's a picture on her Age of Accountability Day!

Michael decided yesterday that it was the day to can. Otherwise, it would be 3 weeks before we'd have time again. Never mind everything else that needed to be done...it was applesaucing time!! So, we began with some apple/corer/peelers...which Micheal determined to not be "saucy" enough...so, we called his mom up, she brought her Victorio strainer down...and then we proceeded to can 45 jars of applesauce!! All done before mid-night!! (Uncle pulled out this awesome spoon/sieve that we used!!) Needless to say, this is how we will do applesauce next time...just need to wash, chop then boil for 20 minutes, strain and ta-dah!! APPLESAUCE!!

So, have I told you how our attempts at gardening this year was thwarted by a gopher family? Despite being late in our planting, we were able get a few squares of beans, carrots, and lettuce planted...the seeds were sprouting...we had pretty leafy greens...and then, they started disappearing, practically overnight...and we had mysterious mounds of dirt in our garden squares!! Uncle carefully dug around one of these mounds and was bit ...Uncle got mad and grabbed the darn thing...well, it didn't survive and it had a family...but we put out something that hopefully will discourage them from coming back!! WELL...we had a few surviving carrots (2) and Mikenna helped to pull this one out... sad isn't it? Wish us better luck next year!

again... So, we are now down to 2.5 mg/prednisone and Kaylee is doing relatively well. She has an undeniable crop of new spots on her legs. We are keeping a careful eye on them. However, no tummy cramps at all!! We'll see what tonight brings. She does have quite the runny nose and a sore throat again. Grandpa is still in the CCU. They discovered that he had been bleeding internally, thus causing the inablility to stand-up. The bleeding was most likely caused when he fell in the bathroom Fri. night at the hospital. They'd done an x-ray to check for broken/fratured bones, which was negative, but no one thought to check for bleeding...they are hoping with the blood transfusion and other drugs, rest for the next 24 hours, (what else can he do?) that he won't need surgery.

Yes, we are moving onto applesauce. Mind you, I don't believe I'll be canning them soon...no, I've got a dress to make for Kaylee's baptism (which is on Nov. 3rd) but I was hoping to get it done before her birthday (14th)...hmmm....we'll see...plus a costume for her as well. Plus get a "project" together for a RS activity. As well as everything else that goes on in my life. So...hopefully I'll get to it before the apples go bad...which I've heard isn't too quickly. The girls, Uncle, Mike's grandparents & I had a fun afternoon picking apples. Golden Delicious. It took about an hour for us to pick about 250 lbs. of apples. I'm not sure how many grandma wanted, but I was only needing about 80 lbs...came home with 150 lbs....hmmm....at least this time they all won't need to be canned, they can still be eaten or frozen for pies. My older 3 loved climbing the ladders...poor Kassi, each apple she picked on the ladder fell to the ground...

We made an unexpected, quick trip to Seattle over the weekend. My grandfather has been in the hospital this past week for some monitoring/diagnosing of unexplained catatonic episodes. (Boy that was a mouthful :S Saturday (29th) my Aunt Audry and Grandma found him in the bathroom, standing rigid in front of the bathroom mirror, eyes open but unresponsive...he came out of it about an hour later, they took him to the hospital, kept him for a few days, sent him home~didn't know what it was, perhaps a seizure. Went in for a checkup on Wed., everything was fine, and then on the way home, the same thing happened again, so back to the hospital where he still is. They've finally ruled out seizures, found a medication that seems to bring him out of the catatonic state within a few minutes had a great afternoon yesterday, but now today he is in the CCU because he is unable to stand up without going catatonic. They think now it's something in his stomach? Anyhow, at one point in time...

After the Asian pears and peaches were canned, I was happy to be done with canning for the year...and began contemplating the task of organizing how to acquire our year's food supply. (Or more like 3m, which after looking at my menu for 3m could actually stretch to 6m.) Then Allison called with an offer of grapes Sunday night, to which I said, "No thanks." (She and her family have become canning bees!!) Tuesday I was chatting with a friend (who isn't a member), who was canning applesauce (80+ quarts and is 5 1/2 weeks from delivery!) metioned to her that Allison had scored on some yummy concord grapes the night before, blah blah blah, she mentioned how she'd like some...I said I could look into it for her...told her I was working on my "year's food supply"...how both my sis-in-laws had theirs in...blah blah blah..."What's a year's food supply? Why would you do that?" "Well then you should can grape juice for your year's...

Wow...we are now into week 13 of this HSP thing...never would have imagined that it could go on for so long!! So...we are once again weening off of the prednisone ...we are currently at 5 mg/day...with tummy pains starting about 9 pm and lasting through the night...we know this because if we don't alternate IBP & Tylenol...she wakes up crying...so...we are still hoping to stay away from the Dapsone . She continues to have crops of spots come and go, and they also seem to clear up quickly. Kaylee is such a trooper!! She has been extremely brave and patient. Of course she does loose it at times, but for the most part she has been doing great. Her icky blisters on her feet have finally "softened" due to Mike taking the time to "pop" them all. It was pretty disgusting, but we are glad to have her walking. It was killing my back to carry her around, to and from places. We finally had my dad bring home the wheel chair. Despite decreasing her medicine, the blood...