Fall and falling apple juice

It's fall time, but it doesn't look like it here. Naomi Kallberg absolutely refuses to let that be a reason to not enjoy fall and I find myself being caught up in her enthusiasm for the amazing autumn season.
The first thing she did was procure pumpkins for carving at the school. We were both a little disappointed that all our school could find was little squashes, but she determined to make them work. A second of our schools found real Taiwan pumpkins, but they were green and more round, they couldn't sit on their own..."Oh well, we can still make pumpkin pies with them."
Then we went on a trip to Taipei by train and we took our two little sisters with us. Guess what we found there? We found the most beautiful collection of imported American pumpkins. I have never thought pumpkins were beautiful before that day. So we bought one. Then we went to Costco and bought lots of candy for trick or treating and two gallons of apple juice to make into an apple cider drink. It wasn't until we got back to where we were staying that we realized we didn't have enough arms between us to carry all of our newly acquired items and the stuff we brought with us...We attempted this anyways and in our attempt to make it up to the Chen's house I dropped one of the apple juices in the elevator. It burst open and was spilling all around our feet. There is a camera in the elevator and I can't help but imagine what the man watching the video was thinking. He would have seen four overloaded females waddling onto the elevator, then seen the apple juice crash on the floor, then he would have observed four people attempting to bend over and pick up the apple juice, then he would have seen the elevator close when we got off and then lots of hands mopping up the huge apple juice mess, then the doors closing again and he would be the only one who knew the secret to why the elevator smelled like apples.

We did manage to save half of the gallon and Faith heated it up with some spices and it was amazing. I can't help falling in love with the taste of fall.

We got home and carved our beautiful orange pumpkin. It was my first time carving a pumpkin. Then Naomi cleaned out and sectioned and cooked up and drained and packaged and froze one of the pumpkins. The next day we made pumpkin pies. I made the crust, but had no rolling pin so I emptied a big old Vitamin C bottle and used it. It was a rather novel experience. Naomi made the pumpkin filling. I'm not allowed to say what she put in it, because it's a top secret recipe her brother invented. All I can say is that the pies were incredible, better than any I've ever tasted.

I REALLY REALLY REALLY LOVE FALL! =)

Something really strange happens when Naomi gets ahold of pumpkins...Sometimes she just looks at them other times...










Pumpkins with the classes. =)


The children definitely enjoyed the fall season in English class.