fruit trees and lemony lemon brownies

We are blessed over and over again by this place we call home.

In the back corner of the complex, there is a community garden (which we can replant in march) 

(Although there are a few lingering cherry tomatoes from the last planting.)

and an abundance of fruit trees! Navel orange,

mandarin orange, lemon, loquat, and some I have not identified yet.

The lemon tree branches are bending quite a bit with their load of lemons.  So yesterday, I sent the kids down for lemons and we made a lemon bread with a sweet glaze. It was interesting.

Today, we grabbed more lemons and made lemon lemony brownies and lemonade!

I have found that our apartment managers and groundsmen are the perfect people for our family to share 9x13s of dessert with. They appreciate the treats and I don't eat half the pan by myself!

This treat was special to them too, because it was made with our "home-grown" fruit.

On the sucking back of books and it being 2:30AM

I budget $20 per year for library fines. One way i use this budget is when we're almost done with a book that is due, I can go ahead and finish it and not feel irresponsible. (Though most of the budget is used to cover my irresponsibility.)

However, with eAudiobooks, there are never fines because they just suck the book back out of your phone when the loan period is done.

And because of this sucking of books, we are still awake... at 2:30am.

We've been listening to the Witch of Blackbird Pond. But at 8:31am it will be sucked back. So the kids said rather than wait to check it out again in 2weeks, they'd like to stay up and finish it tonight.

Bonus:

We finished this puzzle while listening.

Ky made Allstars

Ky was asked to play for the Allstar team and enjoyed playing. They finished up today in 5th place. She had a ton of fun and is looking forward to starting with a new team this week. Soccer never stops...

Fun in the leaves!

Hanging out at the park during soccer practice isn't so bad when there are tons of leaves to play in!

The kids built and rebuilt piles to jump on and even "houses" with leaf walls. 

Winter sick days

Everyone has a cold and needs a day of rest to recover, so we broke out the games, puzzles, and books "on tape" for a low key day.

We finished our puzzle and enjoyed listening to All Of A Kind Family. 

Golf week

All 4kids were excited to participate in golf classes this week. We do this 3x per year and they were bummed that we skipped October classes.

Sy got his first medal in the putting tournament - silver!

And Jo and Kik had to play against each other in a "sudden death putt off" for the bronze medal. Kik won.

Garage sale

So since we downsized from 2300 square feet to just under 1100 square feet, we had "a little" extra stuff and decided to have a garage sale. For almost 6 months, my dad has given up his garage and parked on the driveway. Today, I'm giving it back. :)

No photos of the sale - we (mom & I) were too busy working hard & making virtually no money but getting rid of tons of stuff! 

In the end, this is the garage...   Hooray!

And this was on the curb...

And thanks to Craigslist curb alert, by the next morning, all of it was gone! Seriously incredible!

California Science Center

More fun with the grandparents and cousins!

Create. 

Discover. 

Endeavor!