A perfect weekend...

In which the superheroes took over and celebrated with a Halloween spooky feast!
In which the beautiful Fall weather pulled us outside for a great hike in the Trinity Alps. Forrest was indeed a super hiker, fueled by his Batman costume, (and who am I to argue with that!) and we are dreaming of a time soon, (real soon!!! perhaps?) that we will do our first real backpacking trip with our boys.
In which we made cider! I know I've posted on this before, but this was our first time doing it all by ourselves with the boys. It was a blast.  Forrest was a rock....errrr cider star!
In which I took advantage of the Fall trees and my tree loving boys and snapped a few keepers.

What a weekend, makes the going back to work thing even tougher...:-(

Poor Me....

My washer broke, and I was FORCED to go to this awful house, with this DREADFULLY awful view, and do a few loads, all the while basking in the TERRIBLE sunlight!

 My boys suffered too, as you see... Playing hide and seek in that terrible 78 degree sunlight, and eating just dreadful homemade popsicles...

 And, just to get over the horror of the broken washer, I suffered with this late October pick of the garden. Parsips, strawberries, peppers(oh you know the peppers!)parsley, beet greens, spinach, onions, and a few cherry tomatoes :-) I guess I'll take more of these poor me's!!!!!

Plentiful Peppers....

 So, we are rich in peppers. Why? Well who knows, but October of 2013 is pepper month here at Chez Fultmeyer. Was it the superhot summer, or perhaps the torrential downpour of late September? Again, I wouldn't try to take a guess at why our pepper crop is the only thing going bonkers at the moment, but it is! So, how do we use all these peppers???? And my anwser....???

I don't have a CLUE!!!!

Yes, you can mess your hands to crazy pepper oblivion slicing and dicing and making pepper jelly and freezing...but really, for my hands, that are inflicted with crazy eczema, allergies, in and out of gloves, washing dozens of times a day, sterilizing several times a week for surgery, even WITH more gloves to dice and chop all these peppers. I just wasn't into it.
So, a whole colander sat. For like TWO weeks. Sure I would throw in one or two into a spaghetti sauce to spice it up a bit, but no big looming ideas were coming to use these suckers up.
Until TONIGHT!!!
Insert dinner guests....4 hungry MEN to be exact! And my modified jalapeno popper recipe was attempted! You see we didin't really grow jalapenos...we're not really the HOT family, we're the more mild sweet Italian pepper OR Hungarian wax pepper with an occasional habanero thrown in there. So that's what I did, took  ALL the various peppers I had, only minimal slicing, and voila!!! Stuff with cream cheese, (our 30% less fat laughing cow swiss triangles, cuz that's what I had....) wrap half with delish bacon, (gotta please the vegetarians in our midst!) and you have a delectable treat! With varying spiciness, not all hot, some mild, all delicious. And I used 30...THIRTY of the stinkin peppers with my dish tonight :-) And I actually thought the little peppers without the bacon were just as tasty as those with the pig wrapping.

Success I'd say. Not so much kid friendly, but a super yummy spicy treat. Now I'll be sad to see my bountiful peppers go...

Our neighborly animals...

Lately we have had a few cool experiences with our amazing animal friends that coexist with us in our great big backyard.
This guy for example!!!
Alex and his buddy Tyson were fishing and this beaver just kind of hung around, sleepily on the rocks, watching them fight fish. Not at all spooked by people, and quite lackadaisical in nature, it was the closest Alex had gotten to a beaver! Couple this with some great pictures, and the fact Forrest in currently infatuated with the series Wild Kratts and all animals, including their beaver episode,  overall it makes for some great memories with this semi-Eager Beaver ;-)

Mr. Beaver watching Tyson fight his fish

Other animal sightings have been quite a few deer, though no pictures. Talin is rather obsessed with seeing deer, going out to find deer, and then telling us about it afterwards, really whether or not he has seen one or not.
Also quite fun was this pair of bald eagles at their perch just outside our neighborhood gate. This tree is a favorite spot among the local eagles, red-tailed hawks, and osprey. But this sighting was pretty amazing. TWO of the great baldies, enjoying the view.

Very awesome for these beautiful creatures to share their home with us!

An Apple a day keeps the doctor away, FOUR apples an hour....turns your diaper a bit...sour???

Our apples are delicious this year and little Talin boy has kept up with his love for the great fruit, perhaps a bit too much. We were out picking up rotten fruit to put in our compost pile, and filling buckets and tubs with the good apples. Well that work takes fuel, right? And what better fuel than the sweet delicious just picked apple. One or two will do ya. Three? Get ready. FOUR, for a 2 year old not yet 30 lb body...well us parents had it coming I guess. Sweet apples equal a sour bum.

Poor guy, gotta lay off them apples....

A little sweet Spooky spirit...

You'd be surprised at how much a 2 and 4 year old will do for you with the promise of getting to decorate their very own pumpkin cookie, (whole wheat/flax no less) with yummy cream cheese frosting and 4 different kinds of sprinkles, (all sugar, all butter, all yumminess :-)
The mess after, not so special...though at least it's an edible mess.....

Fall on our river

It has stopped raining long enough for the river to clear for my sweet hubby to catch THIS beauty today. And...we have gorgeous weather forecast for quite awhile now. So, while the goverment shuts down and the Affordable Care Act keeps the nation spinning, we'll be doing a bit of fishing over the next few days....sounds good to me!

The big trip to Massachusettes to visit Aunt Nat

This post is long overdue, but I am finally going to share some of the fun times we had on the east coast visiting Forrest's favorite fire fighter, his Aunt Nat! The travel was stressful, but oh so worth it for Forrest and I. He got to spend time with Natalie while I got to attend a fabulous medical conference in Boston, (not being sarcastic here, it really was great!)
It was a whirlwind week, filled with boating and river trips on the Connecticut River, fun times exploring Aunt Nat's town of South Hadley, Forrest's first real movie in a movie theater, thunder/lightning/humidity/heat/fall all in one week, making Nat and Scott's beautiful home his own in so many ways, and of course the amazing trip to Nat's fire station-absolutely the highlight of his trip!
For myself it was a continuing lesson of travel with a young child and what NOT to do ;-) Perhaps that deserves its own post. But it was also feeling the vibe of a wonderful big city again, getting used to the East Coast ways of toll roads and crazy traffic, expanding my mind and professional skills with over 40 hours of lecture, treating myself to great city food and perhaps some shopping...:-) And, most of all, spending a few awesome days with my sister and her boyfriend Scott. I miss her so much, she really is so far away and this time was priceless.
I have so many more pictures to share, but here is a short video showing some of our great adventures together.
Thanks Aunt Nat and Scott, (and Shelby!!!) for all your help,wonderful care, and patience with Forrest and your older crazy 'Momster'
LOVE YOU!