61. Watch all of the Harry Potter movies

Last spring I read all of the Harry Potter books.  Over the summer I watched the first 7 Harry Potter movies. I had wanted to see the last movie at the theater but I didn't have the heart to ask Melissa to give up a precious date night to watch a movie that she didn't have much any connection to. It turned out to be the right choice.  Friday was the release date of the DVD, and Melissa and I got to watch it together.  Melissa was a trooper watching with me and trying to keep up with what was happening throughout the movie.
I was sad after finishing the books, but I have been revived with my finding of the Percy Jackson Series that has plenty of similarities to Harry Potter.  I have read the first five books of that series. There are a couple more books to read from that series that I am sure that I will get to in the next year.
Who knew books could be exciting and interesting?

19 goals down!

68. Watch 5 movies that I watched growing up

This is one of those sad to admit it publicly posts.  Casey came over last week and we watched the movie Surf Ninjas.  Who wouldn't love a movie that has this as one of the opening scenes?


It was work to find the movie. I was amazed it ever went to DVD.  Netflix doesn't have it for streaming and our library didn't either.  I finally tracked it down at the Arlington Heights library and requested it through interlibrary loan (what a deal!).

We kept with tradition and had some hot-air popcorn along with our own cartons of Ben and Jerry's ice cream. Casey summed up the movie by saying that it was a good thing it was only an hour and twenty some minutes.

59. Make canned applesauce for the winter

Making applesauce is something that I got a desire to do from the Hartman family.  Sue made some fantastic applesauce and it always on hand in the freezer ready to go.  Melissa and I have made it in the past, but it always seems that we eat it so fast and there just isn't enough so I wanted to try to make enough to last for a long time.  This goal pushed me to want to make a lot of it.

This is what 80+ pounds of apples look like. It doesn't look very impressive, but there was no way I was going to take them out of the bag for a picture.
We quartered the apples then put them into a pot to soften them up.

After softening up the apples we put them into the food mill.  I stood at that thing for a very long time.  As you can see in the background, I turned the TV so I could watch the football games as I did it.  It made the time go a lot faster.

Here's a close up of the action.  This is when everything still looked clean.  Things got pretty messy toward the end! 

Here's the reward from all of our hard work.  We made 36 jars.

While the process for making the applesauce is kind of long, it is so worth it.  We have already said that we need to ration the applesauce that we have.  I think we could go through a can every 3 days and not get too sick of it.  It is nice having applesauce containing just apples and our own added ingredients.  It makes side dishes at meals a lot easier.

18 goals down!