I have begun  my applesauce adventure today. I found a VERY simple recipe for in a slow cooker – you put the apples in with water on low for 5 hrs and then mix in cinnamon and sugar. I am hoping to substitute the white sugar with brown for any batches I keep for my own family as Trinity does not react well to the refined sugar in any substantial quantities. Our two trees are not overly sweet and for the first batch we took only from the sweeter of the two. The recipe called for 8 cooking apples but ours are tiny so we filled the bottom portion of the slow cooker and added a little extra water… trial and error I guess. I do have some store bought apples I could add  to a batch but I would rather make the most of the apples growing in our own backyard. Which I should mention I am more than willing to share the apples off of! Though you have to pick them yourself! The final result is actually quite yummy, I added half a cup of brown sugar and some cinnamon and YUM. So I figure double or triple tomorrow and then start the freezing!

Slow Cooker Applesauce (Ken says with brown sugar tastes like baked apple but yummy still!)

Since today we needed a lot of quiet for Ken we had an abreviated school time. The boys worked on the number 9, and did a review sheet on numbers 0 through 8. I do need to work on 5 and 6 with them. For a craft we made our caterpillars. All you need are paper circles (I used cardstock and a circle punch I borrowed from Karyn), a marker to write your letters on them (we wanted names on ours), pipe cleaners for antenae, googly eyes (a favourite in this house for any craft that could possibly have eyes!), white glue for the eyes, glue stick for the circles and I used tape to put on the antenae. I had pre-written the letters for each of the boys’ names on circles so we could do each name like a jumble. We did Trinity’s first so they could get the idea. Gavin added extra to the end of his since his name is the shortest. Zander chose to have an angry face on his. We did up a nice and long one for Chris and Chris as a thank you for the paper plates they gave us for our crafts. These are going to replace the trains on the boys’ doors with their names on them and I have enough left over that we could easily make more or make up kits. The twins were thinking they wanted to make one for their Cousin, I am not sure if I will have them make it or make it up as a kit for him to do on his own.

Supplies (+tape)

Finished Bugs

Otherwise the day was a slow one, kids all spent some of their day outside, even Trinity got in some sandbox time and came back in the house with it everywhere including her hair!

Zander and Trinity

Trinity also has a new word today – OW – she likes to walk around saying “ow ow ow” on top of “hi hi hi”… the boys are impressed to say the least!

"Ow"

Ken has decided to leave Tuesday night for his meetings instead of early Wednesday morning which has made tonight especially busy! Lawn to be mowed, cleaning to be done… it is going to be a wee bit lonely without Ken and has been months since we have had that long to be apart! Sewing wise I have kept working on the stocking during any of my free moments today and am almost to the point where I could do some backstitching in the heel area. There is a long way to go though and I have a couple other Christmas projects to deal with as well. A rather restive day in some respects here’s hoping for a happy and positive week!