Waffles, Wagon Wheelbarrows and Tomato Pickin

On Wednesday night Ruth dropped off postcards and newsletters that I said I would help her do for her job. A great way to earn a little extra money especially with two birthdays coming up and a new baby. Any little bit helps. I stayed up until almost two o'clock Wednesday night working on putting labels and stamps on them. On Thursday while Abbi was sleeping I spent two hours on them and once again Thursday night until a little after one a.m. I finally got all of the newsletters sorted by zip code and was finished. Ruth seemed a little surprised that I had them finished already. Though I wasn't able to take them back to her on Friday due to an uncontrolled event. We arranged to come over on Sunday for dinner and drop off the newsletters.

So we went over there tonight at about 6:30 and what did they have waiting for us, Waffles! Alona had talked to Grandpa on the phone I think that it was Tuesday and told him that we were having waffles. It must have been wishful thinking, because we were actually having beef enchiladas that night. It was delicious, I think that I actually forgot to tell Ruth, but her homemade syrup tasted great! There was chocolate milk, bacon and hashbrowns too! I love hashbrowns and don't get them very often. Neither of the girls touched more than one bite of their dinner.
Ruth read Dr. Suess books to Alona, she love this. Alona has been getting about two books a week from a book subscription that her grandparents have given her. We read those books a lot. Grandma took Abbi outside to pick flowers, Abbi came running in and handed me a flower. I got the white ones, then Abbi kept the orange ones, we asked her to smell them and she kept putting them up to her mouth and blowing. For some reason she thought this was smelling. It was really cute. Now that Abbi can say her own name, when we would call her name she would say "Abbi" instead of coming when we called her name.
We then went downstairs and looked through the collection of vhs-c tapes that Val had of us. We got to watch the one from picking out Halloween costumes last year. Abbi was so little, and Alona was so much younger it really is hard to believe.
We went outside and had ice cream sandwiches. Abbi was more into it than Alona. Alona ended up leaving half of hers on the table. Alona had a plastic sword and went up to Val and Ruth and just started hitting them, she thought that she was playing. But I think that only works if the other person has a sword too. They played with the golf clubs and then Val put the girls in the wheel barrow that he had and pulled them around the block. Abbi came back saying vroom, vroom. Paul played darts with the girls.
While all of this was going on I was enjoying picking tomatoes. I know I even think that I am weird, I find picking tomatoes to be fun. I was able to pick many of them and found that I was much better at picking tomatoes than I was at growing them. My tomato plant that I planted from a little seed back in February is still only a foot tall, while the tomato plants that I must of picked a hundred tomatoes off of were a couple of feet long. Paul really didn't like the way that they smelled, but I did. I like the smell of "fresh" tomatoes, it brings back great memories and the tomatoes at the store don't have that smell to them. That real tomato smell.
Alona came over and wanted to help, so she came over and started picking the little tomatoes. She was real adorable she would only pick the real little ones. And she wanted to bring them home and share them with Chrissy and Jean, 0ur next door neighbors. Their little girl picks all the red tomatoes the moment that they appear on the vine. She is out there checking all the time and she eats them right off like an apple. I am not sure if her parents have gotten any yet. Alona came up to me when she was done and showed me the bag of tomatoes that she had, she was very proud. She had picked them all by herself. I had even said that she should pick just the red ones, and she did an awesome job as you can see.
Ruth sent us home with all three of the grocery bags full of tomatoes that all of us had accumulated. Wow a lot of tomatoes! I was just enjoying picking them, I was not expecting or even thinking about bringing them home especially that many. I guess that I will look up how to make salsa, spaghetti sauce or something. I have I think about fifty pounds of tomatoes.
Abbi fell asleep on the way home but of course woke up the second her door was open,she has taken over an hour to get back to sleep so far. I am so grateful for Paul, he doesn't seem to mind putting her to sleep. And then Alona complained on the way home that she was thirsty, she stayed awake the whole time so that she could come home and have two glasses of water.