Trunk or Treat

Last night was our ward's annual Trunk or Treat Halloween Party. We had a great time, but then again, how can you not have a great time when candy's involved?!


We had a royalty theme going on with Princess Maria and King Louie (I'd say prince, but when did you ever see a prince with a beard like that?! It's just not right...). They even won first prize in the costume contest for best family theme. Aren't they cute? Well, all except for Maria's infamous forced, half-wincing, looking away from the camera smile...

We also had a Wizard of Oz theme going on with two Dorothys, one scarecrow (my mom) and one flying monkey (Robin Bush). I realize I have kind of a weird expression on my face here, but in the other one, my Mom looked like a complete freak and Josephine had her finger shoved up her nose, so I took one for the team...

Here is Lou with his two girls!

Josephine was obsessed with Lou's cape (it WAS pretty cool - custom-made by Debbie Riddel), and kept hiding under it all night - can you see her here?

And here is our family all together, although not all smiling as you can see - sigh, maybe SOMEDAY we will all be smiling and looking cute in the same picture!

Anyway...HAPPY HALLOWEEN EVERYBODY!

Am I the only one this stuff happens to?

This is an image that represents what my children are like lately when we go to the store - seriously...
Usually my children are pretty well behaved at stores, but all of sudden lately, they act like wild beasts that have been uncaged for the first time everytime we enter any sort of shopping arena.

Let me tell you a little story about my shopping trip yesterday. I had to exchange a couple of pairs of jeans that I bought for Lou (picky man that he is), and I had both of the girls with me. We were in Sears and I was looking for a different size for him. The girls were chasing each other around, but causing no real harm, and the store was dead, so I let them burn their energy out. All of a sudden I look up to see Maria crash straight into a clothing rack, knocking it over. On it's way down, it had a domino effect, knocking over the next rack, which knocked over the next rack, too. We now had three clothing racks (and one crying child) lying flat on the ground, with about 100 gazillion mens button-up shirts lying scattered all over the place. I was, as you can imagine, a bit peeved. I spent about 20 minutes helping the old lady employee put the whole thing back together again (in the fall, all three racks had come apart, and were lying in pieces).

After we exchanged the jeans, we headed over the to JCPenney to do another exchange. While we were there, Josephine peed herself, and, after announcing this, tried to climb one of the displays. Of course, she pulled the whole thing down on herself, manikin, metal bars, price displays, folded jeans and all. Another 15 minutes cleaning up that mess - all while apologizing profusely to the VERY annoyed salesperson helping me. At this point, I decided to forget about the exchanges and head home. Better to leave on your own than to be asked to leave, right? Sigh.

Fun in the fall!

Autumn is one of the times of year when I am so grateful to live where I do. The Fall here is just so beautiful - the trees, bushes, etc., all come alive with amazing colors, creating an absolutely breathtaking landscape to look at everywhere you go.

In the DeGaetano family, it's a tradition to go out to Beak and Skiff Apple Farm to pick Empire apples (they are the best!). It's perfect, because it's always right around the time when the Fall colors are in full force. The drive out to the farm shows off all the rolling hills in central New York, and left us all ooing and ahhhing at the beauty all around us - bright oranges, reds, pinks, greens and yellows...oh, how I LOVE the fall in New York!

We took the ceremonial tractor ride out to the picking spot...

...and Maria went straight to work!

Josephine, oh Josephine, what a face. She is always making the strangest faces at us!

Josephine kept taking the apples and chucking them in the bag as hard as she could, like she was slam-dunking them or something, so we had to show her how to place the apples gently in the bag.

Lou helped out by getting the ones that were WAY up high! Go, Daddy!

After picking an insane amount of apples (15 pounds, to be exact), we went to the snack shop and got some maple candy (can you say "yum"?) and some apple cider donuts (again - "yum!!").


And now...what to do with all these apples...any ideas?

More Autumn Bliss

After we were done apple picking, eating maple candy and apple cider donuts, we completed our annual treck out to LaFayette by going to the nearby pumpkin patch and picking out a few pumpkins for Halloween.

There are lots of "fancy" pumpkin patches out here where the pumpkins are huge and flawless (and $$$) and there are mini-carnivals going on in the background (rides, slides, corn mazes, hay rides, haunted houses, petting zoos, snack stands, etc.). Those are nice and all, but we like to go to the good old-fashioned kind of pumpkin patch. The place we go to is just an old farm with the patch where you actually go out into it and pick your own. The best part - because it's not a fluffed up establishment, you only pay $1.50 per pumpkin if it's a big one, and 25 cents if it's small. Now that's my kind of place!


Lou had this great scheme of buying tons of pumpkins and selling them at double the price in the city. I politely told him that we would NOT be doing that...

Josephine was amazed that there were so many pumpkins just laying on the ground. She kept saying: "Look, there's another pumpkin, and another one, and another one, and another one..."

Maria took a liking to the tiny ones. We tried to explain to her that they would be impossible to carve, to which she replied: "Well, then I guess I'll just have to get a big one AND a small one - there - problem solved." What a Maria thing to say.

These pictures are my lame attempts at trying to capture the beauty of the fall foilage.

My photos don't really do it's beauty justice (as any of you who have lived here well know), so if you really want to see some great pictures of the beautiful fall foilage this year, click on this link to see a beautiful slide show:
http://www.syracuse.com/slideshows/100708_fallcolors.ssf

Anyhow, I hope you all are enjoying the change of seasons, wherever you are!

A fruitless fishing trip

Lou and I took our second annual Salmon Fishing Trip this past weekend. Last year, I caught my first Salmon, a 40-lb male that was HUGE!! Take a look at this picture taken from last year's trip (don't mind the horrible expression on my face - that sucker was HEAVY and I was holding it up with a thin rope that was cutting into my hands...)

This year's trip was sadly not so successful. We caught...well, nothing. Not even a nibble. It was a huge bummer, but we still had fun just being together, having some alone time away from the girls. Obviously this means that I have no impressive fish pictures, but I do have some entertaining ones nonetheless.

Here is Lou...well, being Lou I guess

And here is me acting like an idiot - what else is new? :)

Lou built us a great fire on Friday night (it was FREEZING outside!), and one of the logs he found was hollow, so the fire was actually burning inside the log. It looked really cool. I don't know if you can really tell in this picture how cool it was, but trust me, folks, IT WAS COOL. I can't stress that enough. Really.

Anyhow, although we came home with no fish, we did have a good time hanging out, talking, being silly and freezing our buns off together. Better luck, next year, I guess!

Raspberry obsession

Raspberries, raspberries - oh how I love them! We went picking back in the beginning of September with our play group, and got a ton! We figured out that when you pick them yourself (versus buying them in those tiny overpriced packages in the grocery store), you pay 1/3 the price! So we took full advantage and picked to our hearts delight!


Maria did a great job, and even filled a good part of her bucket (the last time we picked berries, they all ended up in her stomach)!

We ate them plain, put them on cereal, on vanilla ice cream, made smoothies, and I made a Raspberry Streusal Tart (Rachel, you totally have me hooked on photographing my fancy desserts!), a recipe I've been dying to try for quite some time, but couldn't justify the cost. Well, with our great abundance this time, I finally got my chance. Oh, was it good...

I was craving them again lately, and so I went picking again last week with Kaytlyn Flansburgh. We ate through them all in less than two days, and I have been wondering if I am overdoing it by going just one...more...time...

Oh, how I love my raspberries...

A few of my favorite things...

I have had a lot more one on one time with Josephine now that Maria's in school for most of the day. I have really enjoyed this time with her, and I am finding myself falling in love all over again with this sweet, mischeivous, adorable little girl! So here are a few of my favorite "Josephine" things..


I love how she's a minimalist when it comes to clothing. She is constantly stripping off layers and poking herself in the bellybutton while saying "boop!" Also, I love her little half innie, half outie belly button.

I love how she is just so wild and happy. She's all girl - she loves her dress-up stuff to be sure - but she also climbs every type of ladder and monkey bar type contraption (the kind you walk on/crawl across, not the kind you swing from) at the playground with the best of them. This is just such a fun age!

I love how she is such a ham - always making faces to make people laugh. Her latest thing is this knock-knock joke she tells over and over. It goes like this:

"Knock Knock"

"Who's there?"

"Cowee" (her silly way of saying "Cow")

"Cowee who?"

"QUACK!!"

And then she starts laughing hysterically. I don't know where she got this, but she seems to think it's the funniest thing ever, and never gets tired of telling it, and I have to tell you, the way she tells it, it is rather humorous...

I love the things she thinks of to get into (okay, admittedly, I don't love it at the time, but when I look back on the incidents, they really are funny). A couple of weeks ago, she got into the peanut butter jar. I was making dinner at the time, and when I discovered her, I found her reaching in the jar, pulling out handfuls of peanut butter, and eating it. She had peanut butter nearly up to the elbow on both arms (as you can see in the picture) as well as on her clothes and somehow, (I'm not sure why or how) all over her feet. Yes, she is crying in this picture - at the exact moment that I discovered her, she seemed to have arrived at the conclusion that peanut butter smeared all over her felt really gross, and she started crying and saying "Get it off! Get it off!" Let me tell you, peanut butter is NOT easy nor fun to clean off of a child...

That's okay, we just love our Josephine, messes and all. She adds such a sweet, unique spirit to our family, and I am so grateful that we have her in our lives!