Soccer...Finally

Poor Reed has wanted to play soccer for over a year. I missed signups last year at our old church so thankfully I found a league for him this fall. It's where my nephew has played for several years.

Reed was super excited to be on a real team and seems to have a knack for goalie. He's not afraid to get in there and stop the ball. I'm sure one good kick to the face will quickly stop that but until then, he's pretty good at it. But he likes running too so I don't think he'd like goalie the whole game.

I go this way.

I got this mom!

Mamo's Ketchup

Mamo's Handwritten Recipe That Her Mom Used

Mamo's Ketchup was always a staple in our home growing up.  Mamo was my Grandma, she lived next door on our farm.  Before she made it, her mom made it, Big Mamo. I was there as much as I was at my own house.  Every summer she made ketchup and it smelled wonderful when she cooked it.  The flavor was nothing like Heinz's version but it was super yummy in a totally different way.

My Aunt's Handwritten Recipe That Mamo Actually Used After Modifying Her Mom's (They Are Nothing Alike)

This year since I am now living back in my home town, I was able to help with the ketchup making tradition.  My dad is now the ring leader and was teaching me how to do it.   Many of you asked for the recipe but there's more to it than just the recipe, it's a whole process.  Here it goes...

I guess the first step is to plant a bunch of tomatoes, green peppers and onions.  I guess you if you don't garden, you could buy all of those ingredients but what's the fun in that?

Wash and core your tomatoes either peeling first or not, that is your preference.  Cut them in quarters or so and toss them all in a big cooking pot.  Cut up your peppers and onions and toss them in too.

Cook this mixture for about an hour at a heavy simmer.  You need the peppers and onions to be soft and for all the flavors to mix together.  Do not add water!  This will make lots of juice but stir occasionally to prevent burning.

After that's all cooked, you need to separate the juice from the solids.  This endeavor not only makes ketchup but you will have juice to can as well.  You will also have a very messy kitchen and lot of dishes to wash but that's just a little side bonus.

After you drain your juice off and smash your solids to a nice thick pulp (that is the hardest part and no, I don't have a good recommendation on how to go about it), it's time to cook.  Grab the recipe and add in your seasonings.  Put it on the stove and let it cook at a heavy simmer/low boil.  Stir ofter, do not let it burn!

This is when it gets good.  This is how you know you're making Mamo's Ketchup.  When I got off the school bus as a child I knew when it was ketchup making time because I could smell it cooking all they way to the road.  So good!  You really have no idea until you have smelled it.  It's amazing.  This is the step in the process when I picked Reed up from school and before he got the door to the house open he said "Wow, what smells so good?"  It made me so happy to hear him say that.  He knows a good thing when he smells it.

You need to cook it for about 1-2 hours.  It just depends on how much liquid was still in the thick when you start cooking.  If you did a good job and it was pretty thick to start with, you may only need to cook an hour.  If it's pretty thin, you may need to cook longer.  This is also when you can can all that wonderful juice you separated out.

We Spiced This Juice Up A Bit - Can Anyone Say Bloody Mary?

After it's cooked and cooled down a bit, bottle it up.  Any glass bottle will work as long as it's not a new fancy twist off type of bottle.  It has to be a good 'ol pop off type bottle.  We keep and reuse our bottles from year to year.  Can you tell?  Hard telling how old some of these bottles are.  Beer bottles, coke bottles...we don't care what they once were.  All we know is now they are ketchup bottles.

Find yourself a cute boy to help his Grandpa GG operate the bottle capper and you are good to go.

My favorite thing to put this ketchup on is a big old bacon sandwich.  Just bacon, ketchup and bread.  Perfect sandwich. 

And as an after note, most of these photos were taken with my phone because I forgot my good camera, bummer.

Falls of the Ohio

It was too pretty to just do chores around the house today so we grabbed my mom and went to the Falls of the Ohio park. When the river is low, you can walk all along the river bed and see tons of fossils and shells. Of course, low water means no falls so we will have to go back again when the falls are flowing.

Magic Tree House

We have been having some beautiful weather the past week. Now that Millie's in second grade, she is required to do at least 20 minutes of reading every day. She is currently reading all the Magic Tree House books. She has read a few here and there but she has started all over and is now reading them in order. She has been coming home from school and reading one every evening. Since the weather was nice, she decided she would go outside and read in her magic tree house.

4th Generation

Reed started another new school as well this year. This is his third school and he is the 4th generation of my family to go to school there. My grandpa, Papo, went to school there when it was a little 1 room Catholic school house, my dad went there when it was just a gym and grades 1-8 around the outside of it and was run by nuns(still Catholic) and my sister and I went there when it was grades K-6 (Public) with some additions to it and still a few nuns that taught there. Now Reed goes there and it is a Catholic school again. Catholic or Public, large or small, it was always St. Mary of the Knobs.

I was not worried about Reed at all, he's my little social butterfly and I knew he'd fit right in and make himself at home. I actually went to school with both of his teachers and several of my classmates are parents of the other kid's in his class.

Reed will only go to St. Mary's for one year and then he will go to public school with Millie when he starts Kindergarten next year.

He's pretty excited about riding the bus next year with Millie but first he needs to make it through PreK.

4 Years...4 Schools

Move, move, move...that's all we seem to do. Well, we are finished moving now and Millie can finally start a new school knowing that she will be going to this school again next year. There is quite a comfort in knowing that.

I was very excited about seeing how excited Millie was on the morning before her first day of Second Grade at another new school. They day before her first day she woke up crying and scared because she wasn't going to know anyone and she didn't know her way around the school.

I was glad to see her attitude changed and although she was nervous, she was super excited. She loves school. I hope this stays with her through the years but in case it doesn't I'll enjoy it while I can.

I was nervous for her all day and was never so relieved when I saw her get off the bus and come running to me with a big smile on her face. She said she had a great day and she wasn't sure why she was so nervous.

Congrats Vince and Holly

Warning - This will be a very long post...

We flew out of Louisville on Thursday morning and arrived in Denver, CO with no problems. We hopped in our rental car and headed through the mountains to Durango where we were excited for the upcoming wedding of Vince and Holly. If you remember the RV Trip 2011 from last year, that is where we first met Holly and I was hoping then that they would get married. So were my critters because they loved her instantly. We arrived in Durango with no major issues, just a small hiccup when Rick was pulled over for going 5mph over the speed limit. We were lucky that he just got a written warning so we slowly took off and continued on to Durango.

After a quick check in at our condo and a change of clothes, we met Vince and Holly along with her family and their friends at The Lost Dog for supper. While there we witnessed our first flash mob. I have to admit, I was not impressed. They make it seem much cooler on TV. Oh well. We were exhausted after supper and crashed when we got back to the condo. It was past 11 our time and we were feeling it. We would come to find that these late nights would be common but the kids adjusted well.

Friday morning it was the beginning of the wedding festivities. The wedding party was going white water rafting on the Animas River. Millie and Rick were pretty fired up but I convinced Reed to stay with me. The water was pretty calm but cold. I was told Millie went in face first when she started goofing around and tried to jump on Rick's tube. It didn't go so well but she recovered. I was also informed she considered the rafting a race and insisted on being in front of the group of about 30 or so people. Millie: always the competitor.

Reed played in the river a little further downstream while we waited for them to go by.

Lots of rafting photos...

Millie left in a tube, goes by with a lady I didn't know with a dog in a canoe. Go figure.

Friday evening it was rehearsal time and after a quick run through we headed to Ska Brewing for a meal and wonderful entertainment.

The Lawn Chair Kings were playing for our private party and they were very good. But they got even better when their replacement drummer took the stage and showed them how it was done.
Needless to say, everyone loved Reed on the drums and he talks daily of needing his own drum set.

Saturday morning was wedding day so the guys were given instructions on setting up things and getting everything where it needed to be. The kids and I and Hannah went in town to the farmer's market where funny enough, Reed was recognized from his drumming debut from the night before. He is already famous around Durango.

Photos before the wedding became interesting when a storm was brewing and the wind really picked up. Considering it was an outdoor wedding and reception, we fared well with only moderate rain after the wedding and no real storm to speak of, the worst went around us.

The wedding was beautiful and my kiddos did great. Millie's hair was a little wild due to the wind but other than that, nothing major.

However, nothing was without incident. The entire wedding party, including Millie but not Reed (they don't rent bikes small enough for him), was riding bikes down the mountain road from the wedding to the reception. This is when the rain picked up and I was so thankful I brought a change of clothes for Millie and had a jacket in the car for her. Her dress would have been ruined and she would have been a Popsicle otherwise because she was not going to let a little rain stop her from biking. I was less then thrilled but there was no stopping her. I led the party down the mountain (in my car of course) and only 1 person crashed, Rick's brother Jeff. Turns out is was no fault of his own but he was able to keep going after going head first over his handle bars. I really hope someone got a photo of this but I'm afraid not and it will only be left to our imaginations.

The kids partied until Reed literally fell asleep on me. I think he danced with every female there from age 3-43. Every time I saw him he had a new lady dancing with him, I didn't even know them. He really is making quite a name for himself in Durango.

Monday morning all the guys took the roof off Vince and Holly's house (how's that for a honeymoon) and Reed helped too. Millie and I and the girls headed up to Silverton for the morning. This is where we rode the train home last year but this year I was driving happily in our car. After losing my earrings and my phone (and nearly my lunch) on the train last year, I had had enough of that. Lots of photos of Millie...

Lots of photos of Silverton...

Tuesday morning finally and it was the day we were leaving Durango to go back toward Denver for our flight out on Wednesday morning. We (I use that term loosely) decided to hike Engineer Mountain. I wasn't thrilled to do it but it was kind of on our way to Denver, via a really long and windy scenic 6 hour drive toward the interstate. And everyone else was doing it so I might as well go along.

To make a long story short, no one stayed together, Rick, Pat and Amy made it to the top, I basically never saw Millie after we took off, the views were beautiful, Reed is a champ, and I think Lyndsie, Reed and I did pretty darn well. Special thanks to Jeff for helping out with that.

And that pretty much sums up our trip. Oh, except for this little tidbit. If you recall our hitch hiking along I-70 story from our Shitter's Full RV Trip 2011 where Reed was forced to wear women's underwear... we stayed in that same hotel on our way to Denver. But this time it was our choice to stay there and we had all our own clothes and underwear. As soon as we walked in Millie looked around and said "OH, I remember this place, they have waffles for breakfast." And that's what she remembered. She does like waffles.

If anyone is still reading this, God Bless you. And welcome, Holly, to our family.