stuff.

I just gotta say this quick before I forget.....THE best thing that happened to me during my dreaded trip to Walmart with my sister-in-law (I just don't like Walmart)....I WAS CARDED FOR BUYING A RATED R MOVIE!! LOL! Yes, that's right. When the guy rang it up at the counter (it was one of those $5 movies), the screen on the cash register was flashing and it wouldn't let him scan another item until he answered the question. It said "Is the customer 17 years of age?" He read it, looked at me and then said "Can I see some ID?" Hahaha... Sarah says "She's got 4 kids!" And apprently I can still pass as a high schooler. We laughed and the guy made a comment about how he goes hunting in Ely Minnesota. :) It was a good time.

Now back to my original post......
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We were looking back on our blog books last night (I make my blog into a hardcover book by the year using blurb.com...LOVE it, it makes for an awesome journal!) and I realized that I wrote a lot more in each post than I do now. I would write about what the kids were doing, what we were doing in detail, along with posting pics and descriptions. I just don't have that kind of time anymore! I wish I did as I want to keep as many memories written down as I can, but it seems as though as soon as I do have time to do anything, I'm so wiped out that I'd rather do my reading with Nathan and go to bed!

My day starts at 6:00am when I get up and shortly after, about 6:30, is when the boys wake up. 6:40 Nathan leaves for work and I start making breakfast for the kids. From then on it's constant running, cleaning, cooking, baking, shopping, wiping butts, refereeing, teaching, disciplining, playing, reading, and on and on and on. At about 9pm the kids finally settle down and (mostly) stay in their room and drift off to sleep. Then I finish any picking up or cleaning the kitchen that still needs to be done and it's my "free time". Well since it's after 9pm now, I don't have much energy to do anything. I manage to either read, spend time with Nathan, or just go to bed. All to start it over again in the morning!

Some might say "well, at least you have nap time!" HA! Ariella does nap, and that is nice to have one down for a couple hours but the boys rarely nap, usually only when daddy's home. So anyway, all this to say that I know I'm 'behind' on my posts (as I do have a gazillion of them floating around my head!) but hang in there with me, I will try to eventually post it all :)

Well my last post was about the peaches that we got from the neighbors tree and how I thought we were going to be dehydrating them all...but I was wrong! We canned them! That second batched that I picked quick with the kids I ended up freezing. Which was funny in itself because our freezer is not big enough to set a pan in it so we can flash freeze them before putting them into bags. So I ended up putting them on regular plates lined with parchment paper on top of all our stuff and freezing them that way. It's a good thing we didn't have a lot otherwise we would have never been able to freeze them! We got a few quart bags full.

Then came the fun part. We went over to the tree one night after Nathan was done working and picked the whole tree. It wasn't a very big tree but we got a good amount of peaches. (I completely forgot to take pictures while we picked...I was probably more concerned with not getting stung by a honey bee as they were sworming everywhere and there were some peaches that had 20-30 bees on one peach!)


I read about canning and what I needed to get (I have never canned anything before, except jam twice...which, by the way, the stuff that I did the other day is AWESOME!! SO yummy!!) so I went and bought the right equipment and I was set. The first day I did 3 quarts of peaches canned in honey water!

The next day we were going over to Nathan's sister's house to hang out and do some laundry (which is a WHOLE 'nother post soon! :) so I decided to bring all the canning stuff over there since she has a WAY bigger kitchen than I do! So away I went canning with some help from Sarah and the kids were occupied with their cousins. I canned another 6 and a half quarts! We are so excited to actually have real fresh peaches!


The next thing I tackeld today was canning tomato soup! I got the tomatoes from some people at church and took on the project in the camper. I have to say that it is THE best tomato soup I have ever had!!!!! So good I wanted to share the recipe with you in case you (or someone you know!) has tomatoes growing out of their ears that they don't know what to do with! It's sooooo simple and it has ZERO sugar in it, making it EXTREMELY healthy for you! And even though it doesn't have sugar, it is still super sweet and sooo good!

Tomato Soup:

5 lbs chopped tomatoes
1 large-ish onion
2 stalks chopped celery
5T butter
1-1/2 t salt

Put all ingredients in pot and simmer for 2 hours. Put in blender til smooth. Strain through strainer as you pour into clean jars to can. Hot water bath for 30 mins! Voila! You have awesome tomato soup! (It made 2 and a half quarts)

Our next dilema is what to do when we run out of room to store our jars after we can everything! We still have a few feet of room at the top of our slide, but once our neighbors pears are ready, we might have to rent a storage shed! :)

Who woulda thought this could be used for storage?!? Works for me!


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Nathan was trying to do push-ups....the boys thought he needed an extra 97 pounds :)



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Watchin' the horses....