Chalk Day.... but not Inside..... OUTSIDE!!!! More Apples, Groupies

Here is the town with all of the little cars on it.

I am thinking this might be the Mall?

Spencer's friend Tyler, his sister Allie, Spencer's other friend Austin and Spencer all were on our driveway today drawing with sidewalk chalk. They made like a little town, and then they took all of Spencer's little cars and stuff and drive them all over it. It was pretty fun and I was JUST AMAZED that they all got along so well for so long and no fights, no drama. In the middle of it, two of The Groupies showed up for about an hour and told me all about their Halloween costumes. The other two Groupies were at a gymnastics meet.

This morning I got up and baked two apple, pear and cranberry Crostatas. One was for Tyler and and Allie's mom who just had minor surgery. I wanted to cheer her up by giving her something nice, but instead I gave her the crostata which turned out to be the oddest pastry ever. The fruit inside was crunchy still ( be cause the recipe was for peaches and plums not apples and pears..opps! ) and the crust was good but it was all just very very odd.
Anyway. We each had one piece of the one I made for us. Also weird. BUT the crust WAS excellent and I will post the recipe for it here.

Here is a link to the recipe. This is for the apple pie, but scroll down and you will see the "Perfect Pie Crust recipe at the bottom it is awesome. Bill even LOVED the crust today I made for the crostata, and he hates just about everything I make...
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/deep-dish-apple-pie-recipe/index.html

Sometimes life is like this: you work really hard at something and peel apples for two hours and spill sugar on the floor and it ends up everywhere including in your shoes and yet the thing still turns out weird. But I gave it 100% effort.

Tonight we went to Office Depot to get some chalk for the new chalkboard, even though we cannot write on it until Tuesday. I learned that you cannot use sidewalk chalk on chalkboard for some reason, which is a drag because we must have a thousand pieces of sidewalk chalk.

Also, for those of you playing along at home, I did find my wallet today which had been missing for about ten days. It was rather embarassing because I had to call Costco, Fred Meyer, Safeway, and Quiznos all to ask them if anyone had turned in a wallet with BOB THE BUILDER on it. .... Turns out it was in the livingroom closet UNDERNEATH like the vaccuum cleaner and the broom and tons of crap and no one knows how it got there.... I mean I have never even been in that closet. I don't even know what was kept in there. We think maybe it had a little "help" getting in there.

Tomorrow I will make the apple crisp, also have some more purees to do, and also make Spencer's lunches for next week. And figure out what to do with all the applesauce I made that no one liked. maybe muffins?