Save the Day!

Or maybe save all the food today.  It's harvest season, which means that we are in the kitchen most of the time.  This year I'm actually canning, whereas last year I only did a little because I had been so sick.  And the year before I did nearly none, since we were moving in.  That's an interesting transition, and it tells me that this year is better than the past two have been.  Sometimes it's hard to see gradual improvement.  

I did a few dozen quarts of applesauce, and wrecked my right pointer finger doing all the cutting.  The apples were on the green side, so they were a bit tougher to cut through.  The applesauce is still good though, even if it is more tart.

I can't tell you how excited I was when I sent the twins outside with their big white bowls to get more apples - and they came back empty.  No more apples!  These boxes were full to overflowing - and we haven't even started on the apples from our own trees!  They won't be ripe for a few more weeks.

I'm always amazed at the wonders of our beautiful world when I'm canning.  Aren't these peaches gorgeous?  The colors are vibrant and living, sustaining and improving our lives.  Thanks, Lord, for this amazing planet!  I love, love, love bottled peaches.  And I hate peeling peaches.  Fortunately for me, my sweet husband doesn't mind, so he peeled and I made jam - rows and rows of bottles full of it.

I was poking about in the storage room for a good shelf to load all the bottles onto.  We haven't really cleaned out the storage room since we moved in, and it isn't really set up efficiently.  I moved a couple of cans, and the whole shelf fell out!  I'm glad I didn't have it full of glass jars.  So we need to fix and shore up the shelves in the storage room, but the produce won't quit coming!  I moved things around as best I could, and made room for the peach jam with the apricot jam we did earlier this summer.  

Before Trent could start shelf-fixing, the grapes ripened, and we've spent the past week doing what must be a million batches of grape juice.  I'm generous to myself here, because Trent has done all the work on this one.  The kids love the juice, and I try to not imagine it spilled on... on anything.

Our excitement of next week: tomatoes!  The pears are on right now as well, and then our apples will be last.  At least, I think they will be last. 

I opened a new bottle full of apple butter from a couple of years ago, and spread some of its dark sweetness onto a hot piece of whole wheat toast.  Yum.  Having food in my pantries makes all the hard work worth it.  And now I want another slice of toast!

Labor Day Chill

I guess it is the end of summer.  Sigh.  I love having my kids at home.  I love not having to get up at any particular time.  I especially love not having to get up early.  Like before 9 or 10.  I know, I grumble too much.  But I am excited for this new year.  I am so glad that my children have the opportunity to go to school and learn.  I am looking forward to having a quiet house.  I like having these changing seasons in life - it's never boring!

basking in the sun, and pretending I'm warm

To celebrate Labor Day (and to make up for not using our season passes, not once!), we went to the waterpark.  It was to be a day filled with water slides and lazy rivers and wave pools and laying in the sun and trying to avoid sunburn.  Unfortunately, the day was cloudy and unseasonably cool, which meant that only the most daring of the boys even wanted to get in the water.  The wave pool was somewhat warm, but the breeze was uncomfortably cold.  It didn't take long for the littlest ones to get chilled through, and want nothing more than to be swaddled in a big, dry towel.

We even managed to visit with Ben, who has spent his summer with crazy-busy hours as a manager of the food areas.  He looks good in his no-nonsense black non-slip shoes!  I'm glad he got a good job for the summer and has been able to save up money for college.

Yeah, we didn't last very long.  Hooray for not getting sunburned, though!  And now the kids can't say I never took them to the waterpark.  It was just too much of a challenge to gather up the strength, all of them, and Opa.  He didn't want to come today, so that made it possible for us to come.

I was able to snap a picture of everyone but Ben, who was busy working, and David, who had a splendid time on the water slides in spite of the cold.  He is our most adventurous one, after all.  Sometimes I wonder if the effort to have a family outing is worth it, but I love to see the happy in their faces.  We're making memories, at least!

Fancy Duds

We're getting ready for a wedding.  Alec wants all of his brothers in tuxedos, and I know they will be so handsome!  We generally don't mind dressing up at our house.  We gathered up all the boys and high-tailed it over to the tux rental shop.  Oh wait.  I'm missing a part.  That's the part where we pulled out all the tuxes that we own, spread them all over the living room for a few days, made everyone try them all on, and after wondering why we have all these pieces that no one fits!, then we headed to the tux shop.

I just had to snap this picture of my oh-so-tall Ben, getting fitted for tuxedo pants.  The store people are more worried about getting the waist right, since the legs are more easily measured and hemmed.  How fancy are we, with our ankles hanging out, and our tennis shoes?  They had a nice soft chair I could loll in while the boys passed out threats if I laughed at their trying-tuxes-on-ing.  I didn't laugh, honest.  But I didn't make any promises about later.

Angle's outfit was less of a laughing matter.  Alec's finance and her mother picked out the pattern, purchased all the fabric, and all I had to do was sew it together.  "All I had to do..."  I spent the summer sewing a quilt for the happy couple, and my sewing machine was pooped out.  So instead of getting it serviced and the tension fixed, I sewed another project.  With rolled circular hems.  And skipped stitches and broken threads like crazy.  There may have been bad words and maybe even tears.  In then end, I had to beg my professional-seamstress sister-in-law to finish the last rolled him and insert the zipper, because the sewing machine and I are not on speaking terms any more.  

But the dress was beautiful, fancy enough to hold her own in the sea of formal black tuxedos.  Lovely enough to make a little girl feel like a princess.  Formal enough... to roll around in the grass while we were supposed to be taking portraits?  I guess that's just right for us.

The End of School

I didn't record the end of school here, but it was a happy time.  I love getting my kids home for the summer!  Check out these cute little faces.  Maybe they aren't being so cute right now!  This will be the first summer vacation for the twins, and they aren't really happy about it.  Freddie will not miss walking home after school every day.  But they think they will miss their friends, and they love going to school.  They don't understand why they have to stop going to school for a few months.  I'm glad they have had a good experience in kindergarten.

David just finished his last year at the junior high, and Eddie his first year there.  I loved just sitting back and watching the two of them flip through the junior high yearbook together.  I don't think either of them budged for hours.

I didn't get a picture of our girl, but her world is falling apart!  She is in mourning for her little friends that she won't be able to see all summer long!  You should hear her lament.  With a pouty face, it's "alllll summer loooooong!"  Like they were dying or something.  Pretty pathetic.  I'm sure she'll manage, because she's not generally looking for drama, but her friends are important to her and she loves being with other people.  Like her daddy, she is.

Here is the biggest change at the end of this school year.  Chris is done - oh happy day!  He has not been fond of being in high school, and really couldn't wait to get done with it.  I'm glad he managed to finish all of his requirements anyway.  He hates having me take his picture, so this is a splendidly pleasant face.  It will be fun to see where he chooses to go in his life.

And that is the end of the school year.  Some summers are full of goings, some are more lazy.  As much as I would love to just relax and vacation at the beach this summer, I know it will be more on the busy side.  My oldest three boys will be working, Ben will be coming home, we have a wedding coming up, and at the end of the summer, all three of them will be moving out.

This is our last summer together, and I plan to cherish every little tidbit I get.  We will have 11 people living in our house for a few months, and after this, the whole dynamic of our family changes.  Not in a bad way, but change is often fun and melancholy at the same time.  Who knows what we will look like next summer?

Announcing an Addition!

Alec has been busy since he got home.  He had to renew his driver's license, get a job, find an apartment, figure out what he was going to do for college, find some transportation...  Whew.  Adulting is a lot of hard work!  High on his list of priorities was getting back to this pretty gal he hadn't seen for two years.  It's a long time to be apart.

Unwilling to be apart any longer, they didn't waste any time to become engaged and start planning a wedding.  

Yeah, ring-buying is another one of those adulty things than takes some good decision-making skills and grown-up amounts of money.  I'll just be a wee bit flattered that he wanted a small amount of assistance from Mom.

I read something somewhere that said the purpose of a parent, when dealing with children, was to introduce the children to new things and help them figure out how to deal with those new things.  Short of having his own children, I don't think there is really anything new of significance to introduce to this boy.  So good luck on your adulting!  Have a happy marriage!  Be a responsible human being!  I'm pretty excited for them to learn all kinds of new things - now together.

It's fun to watch your kids grow up (especially when you get to continue calling them "my baby" in secret.  Shh!).

P.S.  I'm not dealing very well with the idea of becoming a mother-in-law.  I have two of the sweetest, kind-hearted women for my mothers-in-law, so that helps.  But it just sounds sinister, doesn't it?  It seems only a small step down from "wicked step-mother."  I hope I can be a reasonably good mother-in-law.  I do like my future daugher-in-law - I think she's just what my boy needs!

And I miss my mom, who could help introduce me to this new thing and help me figure out how to deal with it well.  We never outgrow our mothers.

Mission Monday

I've saved Monday for missionaries for over two years now.  Here we are, at the end of these missions, and I'm not sure what to think about it.  I'll not miss staying up late on Sunday nights and writing letters to them.  But I will.  That was a constant time I could spend on loving my boys.  I look forward to a hug and getting to see a smiling face.  I am enjoying watching the constant growth toward responsible adulthood.

Here is Ben's next-to-last letter.  He has been working in the mission office for the past few weeks, helping with the administrative responsibilities of running a mission.  He has also been able to still work with some people in his area, as well as traveling to the different parts of the mission with the mission president.  He has loved it all, and I'm sure he will miss it dearly.


Wednesday was back in my area with my companions. I went with Elder Covey and we went looking for families. We found one. Then we taught our fantastic recent convert family that got baptized last week. They are doing great! They have their baptismal certificates framed in their living room and they were raving about the blessings of the Gift of the Holy Ghost. There's nothing like that.

On Thursday... we (went) to go pick President Foote up from the airport, he was coming back from Fort Dauphin and Toliara. So we drove him home and talked to him while we waited in traffic. For a very long time. I love President! He's the coolest guy in the world!

Sunday we went to church. I love church. Then we taught and tracted and found a new family. J. is from Fianarantsoa and is a retired soldier, then his wife, M.L. is from Toliara. They were so inviting and brought us into their house before we could even introduce ourselves. Then they felt terrible that they didn't have any food to give us. People are so GOOD.


Yes, people are so good.  What a beautiful lesson to learn.

Read the rest of his week here.

Colorful Blessings

It's nice to have good food.  Sometimes, I open my refrigerator and I suddenly morph into Mother Hubbard.  Even if there is lots of stuff in there, it often is food I cannot eat.  I feel like I'm dying of thirst in the middle of a waterfall, where there is plenty for everyone else, but not for me.  And it's easy to feel just a little shade of grumpy about it.  It's also easy to get an awful lot grumpy about it and melt into a poor-me pity party worthy of a toddler who didn't get an extra piece of candy.

In reality, we have plenty.  Of everything.  And getting the food I need to keep me from getting stomachaches, or feeling bloated, or having to spend the rest of the day in bed is as easy as going to the store and picking it up.  I don't have to special order anything.  I don't have to wait for it to grow.  I don't have to go great distances.  We are so blessed, really.  It's easy to forget that.

I went to the store and went bananas in the produce section.  I should get one cart for my produce and another one for everything else.  Getting enough fresh things to feed a large family takes up lot of real estate in the cart.  I like unpacking all the bags when I get home and seeing all the colorful fruits and vegetables lines up on the counter.  They look so delicious!

How lucky we are to have so much good food so easy to get!  I need to remember what a blessing that is.