Canning Pears

From this:

To this, with a lot of help from Chris and Melissa:

We bought two boxes of pears this year without thinking about it and so after this process:


I can say I know how to can pears now and we have a little bit more food storage. Now to see if out kids will eat them.

I ended up giving away half of the pears to save myself the work and headache. We learned our limits on this project.

Garden

Here are some more pictures of out produce from our garden this year. I have been slacking on the picture department lately.
We have gotten a lot of tomatoes, at least more than we can use. More than enough Zucchini for 3 families, but enough green beans (they are my favorite, they are so good steamed), and a small amount of corn.

The tomatoes are still producing but I think they are almost done, as are the green beans. We are still trying to grow our pumpkins. We have a few good sized white pumpkins, but not a single orange one. Also the cucumbers are starting to produce a little too. We didn't get any watermelon, or cantaloupe this year. Now that we have the garden box, we can be better next year and hopefully get a good amount, but not too much.

Tanner's first day of Preschool

So since I don't have anything else going on, I decided to be in a little preschool co-op with some friends of Tanner's. There are 4 kids total, so I only have to teach once a month for two day. Tuesday and Thursday are our preschool days from 9:30-11:30. This week will be my first week to teach and so far all the moms have said that it is going well. I hope that Tanner will do well for me as the teacher too.

These pictures were from his first day of school. He had to take a crazy picture before he would smile for me. I love this little ball of energy. I just wish I was better at harnessing it for good:)

Hunter escapades

Along with getting less sleep and being more cranky that normal, Hunter has been getting into a lot of mischief. To the point that if I shower when he is awake, I worry about his safety because I haven't checked on him for over 5 minutes.

He as climbed into the kitchen sink (while I was in the shower). Luckily I had done the dishes that day.



The same day he also climbed onto the kitchen counter and was getting the knives out as I found him.

Today he learned how to balance on his ride-on train and climb on my bathroom counter.

He also loves to play in the backyard and has no fear of being out there by himself. He loves to play with the ride-in cars out there.

He also likes to bring things in sometimes too that aren't always welcome in the house.


Last week I was getting something down from the rafters. I tried to let him stay in the garage with me but after he following me up the ladder I put him inside. When I got down what I needed I went to come inside and found that he had locked me out. So Hayden and Hunter were inside by themselves. It was a little scary. And after telling myself to be calm and knowing that Hayden was safe and as long as I heard Hunter on the other side of the door he was safe too, I started to thing what I was going to do. After no success at trying to get him to unlock the door, I went around to the back slider. I had to teach him to unlock it with some coaching and him getting a chair to unlock the door. At least I was back in. Now I worry that he will go outside by himself when I am not with him:)

Anyway, the adventure never stops here in our house. If it isn't one thing it is another. I guess that is what parenting is all about though right?

Sleeping adventures with my boys

We have had some challenges getting the boys to bed lately. It started when Hunter learned to climb out of his port-a-crib while we were camping. I wasn't too worried about it because he was still staying in it at night, nap times were just a little more challenging. But then he decided to climb out of his crib when we got home too. After fighting him to stay in his bed and worrying that he was going to hurt himself after watching him climb out and fall on his head once, I decided to just take the front rail off the crib and see how he does.



Well, the answer is, not good. Not good at all!

We were already having problems with Tanner going to bed,



and now that Hunter has thrown this wrench into the mix we have a lot bigger problem on our hands. I have tried a few things but nothing is seeming to work except putting Tanner in another room at bed time and transferring him after Hunter is asleep. But I worry that this is going to be causing bigger problems down the line. I guess the only thing I can do is keep trying. I wish sometimes that my boys weren't so stubborn:)



I never know what I am going to find when I open the door after I leave Hunter in there for nap time or bed time. The above picture is where I found him tonight. He has started emptying the trash can, the wipes, pulling everything off his dresser and will open and clothes drawers instead of just laying in bed and going to sleep. I hope that he figures this out soon, or that I can find something that is a better solution. I am running out of patience.

Watching Baby Hayden

Now that school has started, Tia has gone back to work and we are lucky to have baby Hayden with us most days from 7:15-4pm. He is a really easy baby, and usually sleeps 2-3 hours for me in the morning and an other 1-2 hours in the afternoon. The boys are loving having the baby around for the most part. Occasionally Hunter will push his limits or want to be held while I am feeding Hayden a bottle but for the most part we are adjusting well. So when you see more pictures of this little guy, you will know why.

First Day of 1st Grade

Jessi started school the middle of August this year. She was so excited to be in first grade. This is right before school. MJ took the day off to be with her and hopes to be able to do that every year for the kids. We love her teacher! It is a nice change to only have 30 kids in her class this year instead of 60. She is having a ton of fun and reading like crazy! Where did the time go?

Mom and Joe visit

So like I said, after the reunion, Mom and Joe were able to come and stay with us for a few days before they had to get back to life at home. We also were able to have Kathryn and Nathan's family for a night and Dad too.
Anyway, we just hung out and Mom cleaned my house in places that have been left unattended, like the top of my cupboards for example.
We also got to go bowling together. It was good to have them for a few extra days and look forward to the next visit.

Out of order

So because I am a little overwhelmed by two post in particular, I am going to go out of order for a few posts. After Beach camping we came home Friday morning and did laundary and turned around, re-packed the car and headed down to Bass Lake for the
3rd Annual reunion for my side of the family. That post is a lot of pictures so you will have to wait on that one.
After the reunion we came home and Mom and Joe were able to stay for a few days.
Then that weekend we were able to have a quick trip to the River House before school started on Monday. This post you will also have to wait for.

The rest of July: Beach camping!

So as usual, I am really far behind. I do have a good excuse though. You will see how busy life has gotten since I last posted and that gives me a little bit of a reason to not be up to date yet again. Anyway, MJ is out of town recruiting, and enjoying BYU again, so I have my nights "free" to go through my over 500 pictures from the last 2 months and update, so get ready!

We went beach camping again this year. We had a blast and I was lazy about taking pictures but it was just too much fun to try to worry about catching it all on film, so a few will have to suffice. Before I begin with the pictures though, I have heard that there is some confusion about when I say we camp "at the beach." This does not mean that we camp on the sand, I wouldn't think that was very fun. We camp at a campground above the beach, and walk down to the beach daily to enjoy it. There are flush toilets and showers, so nothing too primitive. Just a lot of dirt and sand for the week:)

MJ was able to come with us this year and we loved having him there with us. I especially loved having more than 2 hands to do everything with the kids:) We cooked breakfast one morning and did lunches, but the rest of the meals were provided for us by the rest of our group which was about 110 this year. It is so fun to get to know the people that come and see all the kids interact. I think this is something that we will be doing with our family for many years to come.

On to the pictures:

Monday night was the board walk. The kids love this part of the camping trip, but I honestly would rather have a relaxing night at the campground. We will see if we can bribe them next year to skip this part. Here they are enjoying the rides.

Here they are on the helicopter ride. Hunter liked it at first, until Tanner started to go up and down. Then he had the saddest face the rest of the ride. He wasn't interested in any more rides with our mom or dad along.



Next they went on the starfish ride. Luckily we had some friends that were there and neither MJ or I had to ride it this year. The kids are in the circle and the other shapes are other friends on the ride with them.


Next we went on the race car ride. MJ only got pictures of Hunter and I, but the other two were on with friends too.


Then we went on the dinosaur train.


Jessi also rode the bumper cars and MJ and Tanner went on the log ride, which Tanner calls the "Lincoln Log ride."

And we couldn't leave without yet another twisty snake from this booth. It is now a tradition that I hope does end. We have 3, isn't that enough?


The next morning we had a relaxing time around the fire. We learned this trip that if you want people to hang out with you at your site, bring lots of firewood. We had a fire every morning and evening and we rarely had empty chairs by our fire.


The kids enjoying their milk in the morning while we waited for breakfast.

We even used up all that wood in the background. MJ brought his truck completely loaded with wood, and I brought the Sequoia loaded with our stuff.

The start of the dirty face.


The BEACH!





















I didn't bring the camera the last day and didn't get as many pictures of the kids playing at camp as I would have liked, but we had a wonderful time as a family and we survived the sand and dirt. We will all enjoy it again and again.

Want to come next year?