It’s back!  It’s the school year!   It’s time for pumpkins and orange leaves and new jeans and strict bed times.  I’ve been absent for some time, mostly due to employment, but now I am going to take a genuine interest in writing blogs, as well as catching up on reading all the ones I have been missing.

The Max is in 5th grade.  He has decided he now requires combed hair and cool clothes.  Let’s take a look at where we were five years ago:

And this is the first day of school this year:

I guess I should have something next to him to show how he’s grown, like I did with my iPhone and the chili pepper in my garden.

I didn’t want to bend it, but that sucker’s a foot long and still growing!  We finally learned how to grow peppers, which is great because now I have thirty jars of home made salsa.

Our garden was pretty spectacular this year.  I was not round and pregnant, so I was able to put in a lot more hours.  We are in the process of harvesting hundreds (maybe thousands?) of pounds of produce to store for the year.  Our most giving crop has been the zucchini and summer squash.  I already have enough in the freezer to last two years and the darn stuff keeps coming.

Here’s my iPhone next to a pile that we are going to feed to the animals.  During the winter months, the chickens will lay if the are kept warm with a heat lamp.  But if they get fresh vegetation, the yolks are much darker (and tastier).

I won’t bore you with more photos of vegetables.  But it’s here.  My candles are burning, my oven is baking, and my TV plays football several times a week.  It’s fall!