Canning

Well, to add to the craziness of this time since I have 4 boys in soccer on 4 different teams, it is the time of year to put up all the bounty from our garden.  I love gardening but spending the last 2 weeks canning can get tiring.

I have done 22 pints of salsa.  I still need to do another batch.  3 quart bags of frozen peas.  7 quarts of corn.  7 pints nectarine jam.  5 pints of apple jelly.  

15 pints of peach jam.   16 quarts of peaches.

12 quart bags of frozen beans. 17 quarts of beans in jars. 

I also harvested 25 pounds of potatoes which are in cold storage.

 This is the size of potatoes and tomatoes that grew this year.  The ball is a softball.

24 quarts of spaghetti sauce. 

Several varieties of squash in cold storage.  Wait till you see the pumpkins on the Halloween post.

I still have that last batch of salsa and to can my carrots.

If you have any questions on how to can produce.  My favorite site is here.

I do enjoy all of the fresh veggies and so have my neighbors.

Uintah Camping

As a little girl my dad would take us up to the Uintah's camping every year.  We had lots of adventures.  So I decided now that I am close to those mountains again that I would take my kids there.  We only went for two nights since camping with young children is always an adventure.  It rained on us every afternoon but it was okay because it would warm up again afterwards.

My little girl loves to ride in the backpack.  She is always asking to go hiking.  She also loves and I mean LOVES cheetos.  So as you can see she is in heaven.

It would be fun to compare some of my family pictures when I was young to this one.

Most of the fish in these high uintah lakes are brook trout.  We got a couple from the lake but the boys loved catching them from the streams.  You could watch the action take place.  First you find the fish by looking in the stream.  Then you plop your worm in the center of a deep pool and wait for the fish to come.  The only hard part is you have to watch your shadow and be quiet with your feet otherwise the fish know you are there and dart under their hiding spots.

One of the boys fun things to do is to make forts.  And every stick is usually some sort of weapon.

Layne's Underwater Birthday

Usually my sons pick some kind of superhero or something to do with guns for their birthday theme.  Layne decided he wanted a water birthday.  I was ecstatic it gave me so many more things to work with.

When asked about his cake.  He said he wanted a blue cake to be the water and an octopus.  This is how it turned out.  I though it looked pretty good.

The decorations were so much fun.  I made a shark watermelon bowl.  You make an angle slice on the bottom to sit flat and then a crescent shape for the mouth.  You carve the teeth and eyes and use part of the angled slice and attach it with toothpicks. 

We then made the coral reef out of cups.  We pick up colored cups at the dollar store and then hot glued them together in a loose stacking shape.  We then finished off with splattering them with paint to give them more dimension.

 We filled new sand buckets with treats and covered lemonade bottles with a picture of a swim trunk.  We also made nutter butter sandals.  I don't know if you can see them.

My favorite food they ate were octopus hot dogs.  The really like the blue jello in cups with sea creatures floating in them.  I don't have a picture of that but all of these ideas came from my pinterest pins under kids birthday parties.

We had a blast playing with friends.

Happy Birthday McKenly

Wow it has been a long time. We found out in August that Doug was transferring jobs and he had to start in 2 weeks. It was a fast move and I think I am almost moved in. McKenly turned 2 in January and she thinks have a birthday is a great thing.

We had a cookie monster cake but I couldn't find the picture of it.

We did have jumbo sized pizza.


And lots of snuggling with grandparents. It was a great day.

Boca Grande

Well, my mom was a fantastic person and agreed to watch our kids so Doug and I could take a trip to Boca Grande, FL. Doug has always wanted to catch a tarpon so I agreed because they are in a beautiful location where I can go to the beach every day.
We were in a beautiful condo on the beach. Pictures from our condo are on my other camera that died. Still trying to figure out how to get those pictures off of it.
So all you have are pictures of the fish.
I tried to get pictures of them jumping but I was always to late.
Doug and I total caught 6 fish and landed 4 of them in 2 days.
The draw about these fish is that they put up a great fight once you catch them.

The first one that I caught was a baby. It was 40 pounds. Perfect for me. It only took me 10 minutes to land him. (Isn't our guide the rugged looking type.) The other 2 that day were caught by Doug, but we didn't get to land them. They were in a big group way off shore which is unusual but they were like this because of a storm the day before. Doug also didn't get to land any of these fish even though they were all around us (You can see them since they have to come up and gulp air. They were everywhere. Fishing for these fish is like hunting you spot them coming up for air and go to them.) because we were out so far you could not see the land anymore and there were 5 foot swells and we were constantly going around in circles with the trolling motor trying to stay on top of the fish since we had giant swells. Needless to say soon enough I was hanging over the side chumming for fish.



The next day I came prepared with Dramamine and there were not 5 foot swells. Doug then caught two one 110 and the other 90 pounds.

I caught the biggest one that day of around 140 pounds. The picture does not do it justice since I wasn't able to land it. I fought it for 25 minutes but then my arms started shaking so bad I was going to drop the pole. So I gave it to Doug. He got it all the way to the side of the boat but we were not able to get someone down by the fish before the fish was able to free himself from the hook.
We had a great time all in all.

Easter a little late

I know that I am a little late in posting the Easter pictures. The boys had the Jones Easter egg hunt and ours had to be inside since yes it was snowing at our house. Then the Easter Bunny comes just before midnight since he is LDS too! So Sunday morning the boys got to see what he left. He left them all some bug catching equipment. McKenly got a tree house. It was a great time.

Different Experiences

There have been definitely some different experiences with a little girl. The love for anything sparkly, love of babies, love of purses, the screaming (don't like the screaming), but this one was really funny. If you know me, I believe boys hair should be short so this would have never have happened like this.