Per usual, I was up before the rest of the crew this morning. I fired up the oven first thing and put together another batch of Toasted Apple Cinnamon Cereal a la Brendan Brazier and Thrive.

When I made this cereal earlier this week I was sort of surprised at how perfectly chewy the apples turned out. I sliced up a second apple and baked it right along with the cereal, both for an hour at 250.

I’m pretty sure I saw Mama Pea do this a while ago.

I think I can safely stop spending $3.50 a bag on my favorite Woodstock Farms dried apples. These turned out better than I could have ever expected! They’ve only turned out so-so in the food dehydrator. I don’t know why I didn’t try is sooner – Mama is always right!

I moved most of the cereal to a container to be stored in the fridge. (For up to two weeks according to Brendan, but there’s no way it’s going to last that long here.)

Today’s cereal was made with a diced apple, a half cup or so each of sliced almonds, hemp seeds, sesame seeds, sunflower seeds, ground flax with a couple dashes of cinnamon and nutmeg. I used a 1/4 c of Grade A real maple syrup today instead agave nectar like last time, as well as a 1/4 c of canola oil.

What didn’t fit in the storage container got moved to my bowl:

I ate my homemade cereal with sliced bananas and got back to work on the Operation: Clean Out the Filing Cabinet project I started while my cereal was baking this morning. Gotta make it a little bit lighter for whichever big, strong, handsome, strapping man I ask to pick up and move to the moving truck in just a few short weeks here. (Note to self: start reminding all the men in my life how big, strong, handsome, strapping they are.)

Once the gang was up and I’d sufficiently spread huge piles of paper all over, we headed out for a Sunday walk/ride on this beautiful fall morning.

Even Ping came along today. (Hissy didn’t fit in the trike trunk.)

Goose has recently been renamed Ping and is now a regular tag-along thanks to the latest book I’ve read approximately 100 times over the past couple of weeks here.

It was a beautiful morning to make our way slowly and surely to the coffee shop about a mile from home.

A few weeks since my last cup of coffee, I felt like one today and got a tall pumpkin spice coffee with milk.

We admired the fall decorations.

We also noticed that a certain 3 year old is now tall enough to reach the water jug and serve herself.

Interestingly enough said 3 year old who claims to be “so big!” also claims to be “too little!” to peddle the mile back home.

Good thing Daddy isn’t too little to carry that big girl, and Mama isn’t too little to carry the big bike.

This morning’s walk, in combination with a short half mile run to home and back to fetch a coat for Ms. Ava about 5 minutes into our walk – who, let the record show that upon leaving, swore she didn’t need a coat and had to sign a contract stating “I will never argue with mom about needing a coat again” before I agreed to run back and get it – as well as resistance training in the form of tricycle carrying has sufficiently taken care of today’s work out.

Zak Attack had to go in to work for a few hours today so the girlies and I are holding down the fort. Now it’s time to get started on my next Operation; Donate or Toss.