Thursday, July 31, 2008

Our excitement from yesterday!





We had quite a big event happen last night around dinner time. Looking out the back window of our house we could see flames shooting up out of a house behind us and across the street. I called 911 and was the second one to call. It took a little bit for the firefighters to get there but man what a blaze. It started between two houses and caused a total of $115,000 in damage. They weren't able to get the natural gas lines turned off right away and let me tell you the noise was not one I want to hear again. It sounded like the fire was sucking the life out of the air, scary. The kids stayed inside, I went out and set the water in our garden, there were few burning embers that were flying around, and man was it hard to breath. I took a few pictures of our yard and of the ladder from the firetruck. I wasn't sure if I wanted to blog about it but it has really affected the kids, we are talking a lot about a escape plan if something happened at our house and I went and bought energizer batteries for our smoke detectors this morning. We have been told by a firefighter that duracells aren't as safe, in fact we had one basically blow up inside one of our detectors and we didn't know which meant in that room it was covering it wouldn't have worked. Makes me wonder if switching the batteries out twice a year is really enough.

Monday, July 28, 2008

The Domestic Goddess' strikes again!


My mom and I were busy again today with our canning abilities. The kids, my mom and I all headed out to a blueberry field today in town called Fitchett's which I would highly recommend by the way and picked 18 pounds of blueberries. The place was grassy, clean, and shady for part of our time there. Don has been asking me to can some blueberries and other berries so he can make syrup with them on the weekends for pancakes and waffles. We will be picking some more berries (blackberry, marionberry, and boysenberry) soon. I plan on making more jam and of course canning the rest. We went to Goodwill again and bought some canning jars and I realized I had some lids my mom bought me a few years ago that fit perfectly, they're christmas but who cares, they do the job right? So 17 pints later I think I'm blueberried out for this week at least.

Sunday, July 27, 2008

Happy Birthday Cale!



Today Cale turned 7, it's gone so fast, we were looking through old pictures a couple days ago and can't believe how much he's grown and changed. We are so thankful for our big boy and proud of the boy he has become. He loves to read, ride his bike and do anything that Daddy does. He loves to help around the house with different chores. He's a great big brother and friend to others. God has knew what he was doing when he chose Cale to be our son!

Bowling for Cale's Birthday

Saturday, July 26, 2008

Cakes by Don

May the Force be with you!




Don finished Cale's birthday cake tonight. It consists of five 9x13 cakes, four batches of black frosting and lots of love. Cale's birthday is tomorrow but we had to share today before little fingers find their way into the frosting. I baked the cakes and Don did the rest. I have no input whatsoever in design I am just told how many and of what sort of cakes to make along with frosting and Don is the creative one obviously. I'm going to go through and find all the cakes he's made the kids in the past and create a slide show soon.

Friday, July 25, 2008

Cute pictures and recipe!



I don't have much to add today except that Don and Cale are finally going to be home tonight! YEAH! I missed them so much this week, my little helper was gone during all my work days, he loves to do anything in the kitchen or around the house to help me. He asked that we not go blueberry picking until he got home so he wouldn't miss out on that or the canning process. I got a cute picture of my mom and Morgan reading and Ty being lazy. I am including a recipe for Blueberry Zucchini Bread, I made two large loaves with it and also used frozen berries. I am so tired of the Betty Crocker recipes so I'm trying new things from different places. We went and bought 25 pounds of sugar today and last week bought 50 pounds of flour so I'll be doing a lot of testing and then sharing on here if they turn out alright.



Blueberry Zucchini Bread


3 eggs, lightly beaten

1 cup oil

3 teaspoons vanilla extract

2 1/4 C white sugar

2 cups shredded zucchini

3 cups flour

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1 tablespoon cinnamon

1 pint blueberries (2 cups)


Preheat over to 350, lightly grease 4 mini loaf pans (I used two big ones). In a large bowl, beat together the eggs, oil, vanilla, and sugar. Fold in the zucchini. Beat in the flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda, and cinnamon. Gently fold in the blueberries. Transfer to loaf pans. Baking 50 minutes for mini loaf pans. I baked the big ones for 1 hour 10 minutes until knife inserted in center comes out clean. Cool twenty minutes in pan then turn out onto wire racks to cool completely.

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Raspberry Tuesday!


We had a raspberry filled day today. I was bad and took my camera when we went picking but left it in the car. My mom, Morgan, Ty, Brock and I picked 15 pounds of raspberries, came home figured out what we needed to make jam and then headed out again to buy supplies. On the advise of my mother in law I bought a jar filler and jar grabbers and then being cheap couldn't stomach buying a brand new deep pot to make the jam in so we headed to goodwill and found a cool enamel one for $6.99 along with a new bread pan for 99 cents and a little rolling pin for the kids for 99 cents. We came home and made four half pints, two pints, and five quarts of raspberry jam which is a huge fete considering neither my mom or I had ever made raspberry jam and canned it before. We had a blast, Morgan measured the sugar and did the thing (squished the berries and held the jar filler thingy.)Those are her words by the way. We made homemade pizza for dinner and then a delicious raspberry cobbler for dessert. I'll include the recipe because it was super simple and delicious.


Raspberry Cobbler
Preheat oven to 375
1 stick butter
1 1/2 tablespoon baking powder
1 c sugar
3 c raspberries
1 c flour
3/4 c milk
Melt butter in 9x13 pan. Mix sugar, flour, milk and baking powder. Pour over butter. Do not mix. Put raspberries over this. Bake at 375 about 30 minutes or until brown on top.

Our pudding dessert!

Grandma's here





I had to add a half way decent picture Morgan took of me, doesn't happen often.

My mom arrived on the train/bus Monday night and was already playing with the kids. Cale is on the truck with Don for the week so you will notice his absence in pictures this week.

Monday, July 21, 2008

WHAT!

I feel like the posting queen today, I had two funny shots that deserved a post all their own. The kids have been reading Matthew lately and in chapter 5 starting in verse 33 it talks about oaths and letting your yes be yes and your no be no and anything beyond that is from the evil one. They have taken that to another level in that if someone says something and the opposite is actually true then it's from the evil one, so I think the cold ice cream and the bowl saying it was hot made them wonder about what they were eating! They're so cute.

Ty eating ice cream

Caution, contents hot

Check out my Slide Show!

Success finally!

We headed to the coast Sunday, it was beautiful and windy as usual which was a good sign for my determined husband. We had much success except for Morgan's kite which is just retarded. We decided the thing would rather do headstands on the ground than fly. The other thing we realized on our little adventure is that kite flying is boring. After the kites are up in the air there is nothing to do but stand there, watch and then your arms get tired so they all flew for about fifteen minutes and then the kids were asking us to hold their kites so they could play in the sand. I love the coast so just hanging out for me is worth all the kite hassles in the world. The pictures are in the post above! My first slide show, how exciting!

Our second attempt at kite flying


Morgan and Ty playing in the dirt, much more exciting than running around trying to keep a kite in the air I'm sure.

Don and Cale after success that lasted about three minutes.

That's me with a kite tail in my pony tail fancy huh?

Saturday we all headed to a town near ours to try flying kites and had another failure. We got a couple kites up but the wind would gust and then die completely so I got a few pictures of the things going on down on the ground. Maybe next time!

Friday, July 18, 2008

Blueberry picking!


There's Ty hiding in the plants before consuming his weight in blueberries!

Can you tell the sun was in their eyes?

That's Cale way down there kneeling down picking his jackpot!


The kids and I went blueberry picking and picked about 16 pounds way short of our goal of 50 but we have a month left to fill that. We all had a great time, the kids are so funny when they find a ton of blueberries on a plant they always yell "jackpot" I am thankful my kids enjoy doing these kinds of things. I was asking them what they wanted to do with my mom when she is here and they all said pick blueberries and raspberries, so I asked if there was anything else and they said that no it was their favorite thing to do. We will be canning and freezing for the next month or so, I'm so excited.

Thursday, July 17, 2008

Random Gullettness!


Morgan's lovely artwork

They all love to color and Brock likes to suck on crayons yuck!

Ty is into learning so much right now and I just noticed Brock with the crayon up his nose lovely.

A few of the kids doing sidewalk chalk

Just some of our friend Hudson's lovely artwork


Okay I need to pick an event and blog about it but haven't been able to get my act together much this week for some reason. It's been a long week so far, I had daycare kids four days which I'm not used to yet and my hubby's been gone all week also so I'm just tired and worn out! Enough whining. We have had a great week so far, the kids have been behaving so well and so has Ben no accidents all week YEAH! Maybe he does have a brain in that cute little head after all. Hope you've all had a great week. My mom is coming to visit for two weeks and we are totally excited about it! We also in getting things organized for her visit figured out how to finally get Brock out of our bedroom WOOHOO! He'll move in with Morgan after my mom goes home, it will make having overnight guests more difficult but Don and I can't wait to have our room back! Anyhow, my house is almost ready for a picture tour Sarah, I'll try and do that in the next couple days and post it on here.

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Exciting updates!

Well we've made what looks like a decision about school for our kids for this fall. If I can get my hands on some second hand or bargain priced curriculum for homeschool we are going to take the plunge. I found someone on craigslist that has the second grade part and we are trying to figure out a fair price, she also has some third which would mean I would only need to buy part of it either new or also used somewhere. We are excited for our new adventure, please be praying for strength for all of us, we know it will not be easy but not worrying about all the junk going on at public school is going to be such a blessing for all of us. I am so looking forward to not going back to school shopping for clothes this year!!! No more homework, lots of books and sometimes Mommy's dirty looks. Hey just fyi check out staples over the next few weeks they have awesome school supply prices, like pencils for a penny, last year we hit them up and I think the most we spent on any of the kids supplies was $3 total. I am such a bargain shopper so if anyone else has bargain prices on anything like that let me know we can all use a good deal! I get the paper daily so I'll post anything I find so others can join in the savings.

Sunday, July 13, 2008

Some fun photos from our weekend

Morgan and Cale grating cheese


Nobody knows what I put in my cookies but they'll go off with a bang, won't they be surprised

Don and the kids playing on the computer notice Brocks oh so natural smile

Just another cute picture of Ty

We had a relaxing weekend. I captured some random fun pictures that I thought I would share.