Homemade pumpkin pie!

I showed you pictures of the BIG pumpkins we grew in our garden, but we also grew little pie pumpkins. (They were actually suppose to be carving pumpkins, but we picked up the wrong seeds.) My family got the bright idea that it would be fun to make a REAL homemade pumpkin pie from scratch. After much grumbling, consulting of older ladies and searching for instructions on the Internet, I embarked on the homemade pumpkin pie making adventure. I attached a picture of my son who agreed to help with this project. He helped cut up the pumpkin, scoop all of the insides out, cook it, scrape it from the shell, puree it, mix all of the ingredients, make the crust and then bake it. The end results were quite tasty, but I think it would be much easier to just buy a .79 cent can of pumpkin!

Faithful friend!

Julie, this one's for you, because I know you're a dog lover...

Without fail, everyday when I come home from work, my dog Haus greets me in the driveway with a smile and wagging tail! That just makes my day! He's never in a bad mood, nor is he ever angry or disappointed with me. He always likes to hang out with me, and is even excited about it. I don't think I'll find a more loyal friend, (sorry to those I do call friends). So this is a tribute to our 10 year old chocolate mutt who's missing a tooth, has one floppy ear and one pointy ear, who's always needing a bath and waits patiently while we pull ticks from him, who loves to play frisbee or take walks or wade in the water, who's only bitten a few young children, but is the best dog we've ever owned!

Do you wonder what the McGuckin's do for fun?

Just in case you were ever wondering what our family does for fun, I thought I'd tell you. Our latest family hobby is catching butterflies, monarch butterflies in particular. We've always enjoyed finding monarch caterpillars, watching them make a cocoon and then turn into butterflies. Then a few years ago, in September we saw over 800 monarch butterflies on our property in one day. They were everywhere! So this year we bought a butterfly net and some tags to mark the butterflies we catch. We then download the data to http://www.monarchwatch.com/. In a few months the butterflies will fly all the way to Mexico. There people catch the butterflies with tags and record the data. We should be able to see if any of our butterflies made it to Mexico or other areas down South.

O.k, I realize that may sound strange, but that's what we enjoy! I'll keep you posted on our butterflies progress as the months go by!

Face to face...

We have a little Honda Accord. It's really "Dan's car," but he was out of town all of last week so I got to drive it. It gets good gas mileage and is generally a nice little car, but I feel like the Flinstone's when I drive it. The car is so close to the ground, if there were a hole in the floor board, I could just peddle it. Well, I realized the other day that being so close to the ground also gave me a really great, face to face view of a deer that ran into the car. She came out of nowhere, and for a few brief seconds we were a little too close for comfort. Although the car's a bit dented, it won the battle. The deer lost it's life. Oh by the way, it doesn't look like much damage, but the repair man said it will cost over $2,200 to get fixed!

Pics...

We recently repainted the boy's room. After a complete day of cleaning and then another day of painting and wallpapering, it looks great. Surprisingly, it has actually stayed clean for a few weeks now. Not surprising, the border is wildlife, (deer, bear and moose). Also shown on the wall is Jor's first turkey.

We had a super year of growing pumpkins in our garden, thanks to our new compost pile. These are two of the biggest we grew, with the largest one topping in at over 108 pounds. We had 10 that were right around 100 lbs.