Theater Tech

 Amelie's in Theater Tech this year for her practical art & they're building the sets for the plays that Hickman puts on. We went to see the first production - Mama Mia - and to admire Amelie's wall/door/floor that she worked on. Look how professional!

Pickled Green Tomatoes

Posting this to save it for posterity (and myself). I love the pickled green tomatoes they serve at some fried fish places in the bootheel & it's a great way to use up all the green tomatoes left at the end of the season. It's kind of relishy and goes well with fish & white beans & anything really. (I like it with a lot of my side's thanksgiving food.) 

It cooks down a fair amount & the tomatoes release a lot of liquid if you're worried about it not being enough. We didn't put any hot peppers in - maybe next year!

We did a 1/4 recipe and it made about 2 quarts, so here's that translation: 

8 cups green tomatoes

1 cup onions

1/2 cup white vinegar

3/4 cup sugar

2 tablespoons salt

Mix everything but tomatoes together til hot, add green tomatoes and bring to a pool til tomatoes turn light green, turn off heat, place in hot sterilized jars. 

Tonsillectomy

 Jim got his tonsils & adenoids out on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. It's been a week and a half and I think he's pretty well recuperated - no PE for a couple more days, they said, though. 

His surgery wasn't until 3:45pm, which makes for a long day of no food! And nothing to drink, either, after noon. 

He ended up having to spend the night in the hospital and was Not A Fan. We watched the Jack Black Jumanji and had some popsicles and microwave mac & cheese. All in all a little crappier experience than maybe he was expecting! There was the holiday plus a snow day at school, so he only ended up missing 2 days. 

Halloween 2025

Sam was excited about putting up lights for Halloween. 

The 5 of us also carved pumpkins & then roasted & ate the seeds. 

From left to right: Jim, Sam, Leah (only got a little help on 3 letters for "treat"), Amelie (she carved the same design last year),  Crystal (Jinu from K-pop Demon Hunters)

Nana Jana & Leah worked on a haunted doll house: 

We went to a Halloween party the Friday before Halloween & mine & Leah's costumes were different, but did we take any photos? Nope! Oops! 

Nana Jana loaned Amelie a cloak so that she would be warm. Jim walked around in shorts. 

Leah worked very hard over several days on her witch costume. She even made a little papier-mache bird/familiar. 

Amelie was also a witch!

And Jim was a scary dude in a mask! He did abandon his mask toward the end - so then he was just a teenager without a costume - and one house gave him some pushback on it. 

I wore my light-up ghost earrings to work & then for passing out candy. 

Amelie and Jim came home with the most ridiculously excessive candy haul ever. Jim did get 1 potato, and one house was having hotdogs so he joined in with that, too. 

We ended up with 57 trick-or-treaters total! 

Aunt Jenn & Uncle Joe got to come over & pass out candy & walk around the neighborhood for trick-or-treat this year! Since they're here in MO! Did we take a picture? No! Next time!

Here's the link to last year!

School Pictures 25-26 School Year

 For the second year in a row, we've got 3 kids in 3 different schools - and they all do their school pictures differently, with different companies at different times of the year. Amelie took hers on the 1st day of school. She's a sophomore at Hickman (& we paid an exorbitant amount of money for these phones and they are a little blurry!): 

Jim's a seventh grader at Jeff Middle. He brought his photos home all crumpled up in his backpack, but I wasn't going to pay any more money for a replacement. 

And Leah's a 3rd grader at Ridgeway (unit B!)

 

Dentist

The kids had their back-to-school dentist appointments & everyone had x-rays & no one had cavities, so that's a plus: 

No pics of Amelie, who took the longest, though!

Jim's got a juvenile delinquent tooth & they recommended orthodontics. You can see the adult tooth is coming in sideways and not growing down to push the baby tooth out (the baby tooth is the one that's just hanging out there all by itself). The dentist thought they'd want to pull the baby tooth & then do braces to pull the adult tooth down as it is "stuck." There were also many dire warnings that his current brushing & flossing routine was not going to cut it with braces on. 

 You can see the wisdom teeth really clearly on this one, too: 

K Pop

Leah has been listening to K Pop on repeat - due to the K Pop Demon Hunters movie on Netflix that all of the 3rd graders are obsessed with. 

It's about a super popular (fictional!) girl band in Korea called Huntr/x, whose members are secretly demon hunters. Then a rival boy band called the Saja Boys (who are actually secretly demons!) comes on the scene. 

There was a singalong showing at the movie theater and Leah & I went (& she & the other kids in the audience sang along to every word). It’s catchy!

We wore matching dresses (from Easter):

Sam keeps making fun of me because I’ve been singing the soda pop song.

She made a Rumi costume & wore it to Tyrps camp one day: 

I think it gets the spirit: 

 Teen Birthday Interview

(As Nana Jana let me know, I did the interview & then forgot to publish it! Here it is!) 

Jim's birthday is tomorrow! We are doing the interview now because it's the weekend! For his birthday meals, he chose a maple bacon doughnut for breakfast, smoothies for lunch, and Pappo's pizza for dinner. We're going to Sparky's tonight for ice cream. 

1. How old are you? 13. No I'm 12. I'm turning 13. 
2. What is your favorite color? Green. 
3. What's your favorite possession? The Switch. 
4. What is your favorite game? Silk Song. What about game that's not a video game? I like chess. 
5. What is your favorite song? Probably "Ash in the Sun" by Vundabar.
   
   
   
   
6. Do you  have a favorite animal? Armadillo Lizard. Is that what you said last year? They will forever be my favorite animal. 
   
7. What is your favorite book? Or just a good book that you've read recently? Amercius.
   
   

   
   
   
8. What is your favorite movie? Or just a good movie that you've seen recently? I liked Scott Pilgrim. 
9. What is your favorite TV show? I'd say Adventure Time.
   
   

   
   
   
10. What is your favorite thing to eat? It's hard to beat burgers.
11. Where is your favorite place to go? The movies
12. Who is your best friend? Grant.
13. What is something you learned last year?  I learned how to sew & thread a needle.
14. What is something you'll learn now that you're 13 (or this year in 7th grade)? Some Algebra. I don't understand anything but I have an A. 
15. What is your favorite subject at school? RTI (study hall). Actually English. 
16. Who is your favorite teacher this year? Mr. Hanselman. Is that your English teacher? Yeah. 
17. What is something that is hard for you to do?  Give Leah a piggyback ride. 
18. What is your favorite thing to do? Give Leah a piggyback ride.
19. What is your favorite thing to do with friends? Go to the movies. So I don't have to talk. Actually maybe the pool. 
20. What do you like about Me (Mom)? Nothing. No don't write that! Um. I like that you didn't marry for looks. 
21. What do you like about Dad? I like that he was very ambitious with his marriage. 
22. What do you like about Amelie? We can talk a lot. I don't know. She talks a lot. She's very nerdy. Is that a good thing? Yeah. 
23. What do you like about Leah? She's very cute and ugly and I love her. 
24. What do you like about yourself? I can play a lot of instruments. 
25. What do you want to be when you grow up? A dictator. Actually, maybe a musician, I don't know. Or a president. 

Here's the link to last year: https://babybuffaloe.blogspot.com/2024/09/jim-birthday-interview.html

Here's the picture from smoothie lunch (they were not being very cooperative with the photo, but they were getting along!!) 

And from dutch baby pancake breakfast!

Permit Driver

 Amelie passed her permit test! First try!

She was not prepared for the questions about her height, weight, eye color, and zip code, however! To be fair, those were not in the book!

We drove very, very slowly around the middle school parking lot!

And then, a couple of weeks later, the real permit came in the mail (not just the paper copy): 

Glasses!

 Jim got glasses. He picked these out, out of all the possible frames: 

He kept saying things like, "WOW." "I can see!" "It's really blurry without these," "That's, like, so much better," and "I can read that over there!!" and then "Why are you laughing at me??" 

First Day of School 2025

 Happy first day of school, everyone!

Amelie's a sophomore at Hickman. She gets to sleep in a whole hour later than the other kids. And, miracle of miracles, the bus was exactly on time today (for the ride to school). 

Jim is in the 7th grade at Jeff Middle. 

Leah's in 3rd grade with Ms. Bashem again at Ridgeway (unit C!) She's the only kid who was VERY PARTICULAR about her first day outfit. I did (cruelly) prevent her from wearing a pony tail of fake purple hair. Maybe later this week! Ha!

Sam got up at the crack of dawn & bought fresh donuts for breakfast. 

Here's to a good year!

Swift Nature Camp

Like I said before, we did a whole lotta camp this summer! Jim especially! He spent 3 weeks at Swift Nature Camp in Wisconsin. They also did the photo uploads so we could somewhat stalk him on Facebook & he sent 2 letters home (& I think one more to Nana Jana). 

He flew on an airplane for the first time to get there: 

                                                                                           

There was a pig named Bubba who ate the leftover food scraps from the mess hall: 

This was from polar bear swim - Jim says it was very cold when they swam in the morning - though it doesn't seem very polar bearish to me in late July!

I asked what was under Jim's shirt & he said it was a pillow for a skit for vespers. They were doing the Lorax & were the big backs who speak for the trees.  

Jim, wearing a flannel shirt & swim trunks. (Apparently we forgot to pack his second pair of swim trunks so he just had the one pair.) 

Jim was on the vespers committee. "The trees are elders, we must respect them." 

Clowning club: 

"This is probably some kind of game. We did a lot of like, camp games." 

This was when a guy came to the camp & talked about animals. He had a lot of turtles. 

Board games club: 

You had to push the ball with your nose: 

This was at the nature center - learning about ornithology. 

They canoed over to the island on the last day: 

This was at opening campfire. I asked why Jim was wearing the skeleton hoodie & he said it was cold.  

It looks like Jim has an escort of armed guards: 

Gaga ball: 

More Gaga ball: 

On the right: 

On the left: 

Sam had big car trouble on the way up to get Jim, so I had to rescue him! It was nice to be able to go pick Jim up together and see his cabin and some of the camp, though.