Getting ready for an Iowa Winter

Chloe on the slide.

Piper inspecting an acorn! "What's that?"

Look at those curls!

Ava

Sorry the pictures are not in the right place again. Blogger isn't liking me much today.

It's getting colder here, the forecast is calling for 50 degrees tomorrow. Wow! I have been doing the typical winter preparations around home. I have a list of things for the guys to do like clean the chimney and put up plastic over the door we don't use in the kitchen-it lets in a lot of cold air, there is a window in the girls' room that also needs plastic. We need to eventually budget for new windows but not this year. We use wood heat and that saves us a lot of money but with Austin gone we are a little behind on our supply. Levi needs to take a day for just going out and getting some more wood up. Last year we didn't use very much LP at all, we always leave the furnace off for as long as possible and then when we do give in and turn it on, it's mostly just for a back up for nights and when I can't get the wood stove started lol. I do pretty good but sometimes if we run out of fatwood I just can't get away long enough to sit there and mess with it(it's in the basement). I love to bake and the oven will heat the kitchen and living room pretty good so sometimes I just bake something in the morning and then when the girls lay down for nap I have time to go get the wood stove going. Normally this time of year we have a fully stocked pantry and freezer. Since having triplets though it's been rough getting ahead and this year I didn't even attempt a garden. In years past we have had huge gardens and shelves full of green beans, tomatoes, relish and lots of winter squash. Last year we had a freezer full of corn and apple slices but this year with a bunch of 2 yr olds running around it just didn't happen. We have some raspberry jam that Randy helped with but that's about it. I did get over to the Amish stores to get my winter supply of dry goods in bulk. I forgot about getting pictures until I was almost done putting it away so there is only one picture. I think I will dig out some of our older pictures of our big gardens and fun harvest pictures so I can post them in the next day or two just for fun (fun for me :-).

I'm sewing up some winter slippers for everybody and adding sleeves or lengthening some shirts to get some more wear out of them. Adding some ruffles to the bottom of some of the girls pants too, they are so cute and if I can get 6 more months out of them why not? I want to get these done so I can start on the Holiday outfits. I am also planning some adorable coats for the girls so I have a lot to do as usual.

I'm also adding a few park pictures from our last outing.