ALPHABET SONG

today Jason caught ALL of our attention as we heard him singing the Alphabet song -which was playing on the "word whammer" which is magneted to our refrigerator.
He had ALL of our attention because we were all so surprised at how well he knew the ABC song -
but the best was to come as he sang "W,X,Y,&Z.

it came out as "snugga you X,Y,&Z" (snugga meant snuggle- one of our favorite things to do with this sweet 2 year old!)

FROGS

Last Thursday, I went walking at the Island with my friend Alison. As we passed the mostly dried up pond, I let Jason throw some rocks in. We were surprised when frogs just started going EVERYWHERE!!! We wandered down the bank to get a closer look, and discovered every time you took a step, frogs basically bubbled up from the mud, and from under the rocks. Alison took a little run across one side to the other and it was like the whole ground came alive!!! There were hundreds, maybe? thousands? of frogs!!! I couldn't wait until Friday after school to take ALL of my kids to check it out. (We even kidnapped Grandpa W and brought him along, and Grandma met us after work!) It was as GROSS as it was amazing! The water was really green, and I'm not usually too crazy about just turning my kids loose on purpose where it is all muddy - but it just had to be done. When we got done, we wandered down to the river, which was low enough that we could wade around and get washed up(thank goodness!). The girls also found some heart shaped rocks to give to our friend Debi for her collection! That was A LOT of fun too!

All Done.....for this year....

I LOVE canning season! but Man - am I tired!
I think this is the first year EVER that I have filled EVERY canning jar that I own!
I MUST say thank you to my mom and my mom-in-law for being such great teachers and examples! They have taught me(and continue to teach me) everything I know about canning! I REALLY do enjoy it! OH! I must say thank you to my dad, too. He was able to come help me with my pears for several hours on two different days! THANK YOU DAD! Jason was especially happy to have Grandpa here!!! Jason would like it if they could just hang out together EVERY DAY!!!
I must note that I missed having the help of my sis-in-law this year! We usually team up on our peaches and pears(she is the best pear peeler EVER!) but, she is out for this season cuz she's expecting a little one in November -and supposed to be taking it easy so as the babe won't come too early(like her last one did at 10 weeks early!) -Mary, you have not been replaced!
Anyway, I have finished up my canning season with something new, "peach salsa" - it doesn't LOOK as pretty as I thought it would - but it tastes pretty good! -
For about the past 5 years, we have been doing most of our canning outside -using camp stoves. It has worked out so nicely and keeps a lot of the "sticky" outside. Well this year I had a HUGE problem. BEES, BEES, and MORE BEES. The bees got even worse than these photos show. It got so bad, I had to put everything away and start fresh the next day - doing all the work INSIDE and only processing outside.
I only got stung once which was amazing - cuz they kept landing on me! check out the bees....

















PEARS.....(oh, and one other new thing, some Pear Sauce)













PEACH SALSA

volleyball lesson.....

I know that so far these posts all include JA, but now with the 4 oldest in school - that leaves JA and I with a lot of one on one!
so, another JA story:
The other day I told Jason when he woke up from his nap that it would be time to go to JE's volleyball game. He asked if she was going to make it through the "basket hoop"(aka the bb net), I explained to him that she wasn't playing basketball, but volleyball, where she would be hitting it over the net. After discussing bb and vb a little bit longer, and him having those two figured out, I decided to ask him "now what do you do in baseball?" he replied "you hit it OVER THE FENCE!" guess he's got the right idea!
(the crazy thing about it was - at the volleyball game a girl actually bumped the ball just right(wrong actually) that the vball went through the basket ball hoop! I looked at JA and he looked at me - and we had to talk about it all over again!)

Hot dogs????

A couple of weeks ago we were driving down the road to go swimming at the Smith's house - JA started saying "there are hot dogs in that field." It took a while, but we finally figured out that he was talking about the "cat tails". Here is a picture of JA with his "hot dogs!"

tomatoes!?!?!

Yay- done with this batch of tomatoes


41 quarts of spaghetti sauce

5 quarts of pizza sauce







and these are now officially 14 pints of salsa!!!

Feels good to be done............
...............now I am on to .....Pears!!!