Harvest 2009

With the economy the way it is and Casey's non-stop paranoia about the end of the world, we decided to be domestic and Bottle. I'm pretty sure it's my new obsession! Over labor day we harvested our corn and a box a pears. During the week me and Casey did a batch of salsa for 12 pints. So I was totally pumped to learn how to do peaches. My mom, the domestic goddess, came and helped me and Jakoye do 3 boxes of peaches. It was actually really fast with three hands working. Jakoye got 17 quarts out of her box and I got 33 quarts out of my 2 boxes. The next week my neighbor Becky wanted to learn so we did another 2 boxes of peaches and 2 boxes of tomatoes for salsa. All together I ended up with 300 pints of corn bottled and frozen, 50 quarts of peaches, 13 quarts of pears, and close to 50 pints of Salsa. Our family garden was pretty much done for the year except for the pumpkins and potatoes. We ended up with close to 75 pumpkins so we invited the neighbors and friends to come get some. The kids had a blast picking out their own. The only thing left was a few watermelon and our 250+ potato plants. Kaitlyn and Abbie came down with us and they had a blast riding the tractor(Kaitlyn) and finding potatoes(Abbie). It didn't take long to fill the back of the truck! Hopefully we can keep them good since the pit was full of water when we went to store them. I'm sure papa Reid will figure something out! Over all the Garden was a huge success and I can't wait for next year.

see more pics @ http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=116293&id=1332408589&l=2563310854

First Day of Preschool 2009

I can't believe my little stud rat started his last year of preschool! I'm getting so old! He couldn't wait to start and was so excited that Gavyn was going to be in class this year. When I asked him how his first day went he said "we sang some chicken song, but me and Chase didn't." He's not much into performing, but hopefully he learns a lot. The one morning Nikki picked them up she asked them what they learned and Cael told her they learned the letter "N". Gavyn didn't answer her so she asked Gavyn what he learned. Cael immediately answered for Gavyn and said "he learned "N" too, she didn't just teach me!" Some days Some days! I also found out that he has a little girl friend/secret admirer. The one morning I dropped him off my friend Kelly Greenhalgh came up to me laughing and said she had to take Braylee to see Cael's house. Once they drove by she wanted to know if his friend(gav) lived there with him. A few weeks later I helped in class and the next day Kelly said Braylee couldn't wait to tell her that "Cael's mom was there". I just love this age!

Labor Day....and i'm serious!

After months of tending our prize garden it came time to HARVEST! We started early on Saturday morning picking and only stopped just long enough to swallow a piece of pizza and then we were back to work. When the seven heaping laundry baskets showed up my dad hurried and ran to greenline and bought 3 more pressure cookers. That gave us 4 cookers to tend and they would do around 19 pints each, so I thought we would be done in no time...I was wrong. Even with the 4 cooker we still didn't finish until around 11 pm that night. We had already froze corn during the week and then with our marathon bottling day we ended up with around 200 pints each plus 40 for my grandpa. I was so tired when I landed in my bed that night, but it made me feel sooo good to think of my selves full of corn for the year.

On Monday, Casey got a wild hair and finally gutted our master bathroom that we haven't used in over year...long story. By the end of the day he had Everything out of the bath and ready to finish. I might actually have my shower back...Yahoo! He also replaced the little prison window with a nice big one we can actually see out of. I will post final pict later when the project is complete, but here's a couple for now.