Abundant Harvest and other happenings

Last Sunday, Ricky had acquired free Philly's tickets and decide to go with Chase on a fun father son day. well it turned out that Chase is a little small to sit for that long and they ended up coming home pretty early (as in I was watching the 7th inning on TV when they got here). It sounded like they had fun while they were there though and Chase enjoyed being spoiled by daddy with all sorts of sweets and treats.

(cotton candy)

All week I was pretty much just working on preserving the produce from our garden. Tomatoes on Monday, and Wednesday, corn on Thursday, tomatoes again on Saturday (I have too many tomatoes I think) I made a lot of soup to freeze and the last batch of tomatoes I canned spaghetti sauce. I had gotten Myself a Victorio Strainer as a birthday present and used that on Saturday for the first time but I don't really like it very much. I didn't think it saved me that much time and it's really hard to clean. My food mill doesn't waste as much good stuff and it a lot easier to clean. So I might try and return the strainer, I hope I can. Ricky's parents think we'll get one more harvest of corn and then it will be done. Our potatoes are done too it's just a matter of digging them up.

A couple days last week I took the kids to the local pool. If you go after 4:00pm it's only $4 to get in and both of my kids are free so it's not such a bad deal. Plus there's not a lot of people there around that time since it's getting close to dinner time. We stayed in the kiddy pool the whole time pretty much but it was a lot of fun and felt really good to cool down.

Friday, Dominic was at our house all day and in the morning I had to take two of the dogs to the vet so I took 3 kids and 2 dogs and we all piled in the car together. Dominic was a big help though so it wasn't as bad as it could have been. In the afternoon Ricky was home and enlisted the kid's help in cleaning up the garden a little bit. Some of our rows of corn are done so Ricky chopped them down with his machete and the kids ran them over to the trailer.

Chase could only take one at a time but I think Dominic was helping pretty well:) Usually this is where I can find them though when they are outside.

Joanna was eating sand by the fist full, gross.

Yesterday morning we visited Chad and Sheila's church and they invited us for lunch so we were over there for a while. After the kids woke up from their late naps we went fishing. Chase caught a fish all by himself! I had been casting for him and reeling it in and if I hooked a fish I would give it to him to reel in. Well I had cast out and had to go get Joanna so gave the pole to Chase and he started reeling and caught a fish! he said, "look Mom, I caught a real fish." I laughed so hard, I was so proud. Pretty much the kids and I just waded around in the cool water while Ricky fished. We were driving home and saw Dexter sitting on his porch and stopped to talk to him. We found out that they were watching Tina's (Ricky's cousin) kids and were about to leave for the park with them. So we drove home and got a change of clothes for our kids (they were sopping wet from fishing), two Frisbees and two footballs and met them at the park. It was a lot of fun running around with the kids but very hot. We stopped back at patty's house afterwards and she fed us a late dinner and dessert and we headed home and for bed. It was a very fun day but silly me, I didn't take any pictures! Here's some of Joanna begging for mama's milk at the end of the day. Poor thing, doesn't she look hungry? She only nurses 3-4 times a day now and has been waking up once or twice but generally doing a lot better sleeping. Praise the Lord for that! The allergies are not posing too much of a problem with finding things for her to eat but I'm not sure what to give her to drink besides water and juice. She seems to be allergic to goats milk as well and doesn't care for soy milk.

This morning I took all three dogs to get haircuts and then went and got the rest of my little family adjusted. I went home and right after we were done eating lunch the groomer called to say the dogs were done so we went out to pick them up. They look very nice. The puppy, Blondie, looks adorable. I took some pictures of her with my cell phone but I'll have to upload them another time cause I have to e-mail them to myself first, but she is so cute. This evening I'm leaving to spend the night at my parents so more driving for me today.