Family Vacation Fun Slideshow

Greetings from the depths of the post-vacation laundry piles! I think that I am finally seeing the light, even it is just until tonight when the piles start afresh.

We just got back from a trek to Waldport, OR. After suffering from temperature shock (it was just in the high 60's-low 70's there with much lower lows) we had a great time. We had to make a quick Salvation Army run to get warmer clothes and then were fine!

Get Your Own! | View Slideshow

THE Wedding, Rehearsal, Family Slideshow

As most of you know, my youngest sister got married yesterday. Outdoors no less, in the scorching heat! It was a nice ceremony, even with sweat running down our backs, legs, faces, not to mention crabby, hot kids. We survived and even better, the girls have a new Uncle and we have a new brother-in-law.
Congratulations Linnea and Paul!

It's only 8:46 am?!?

Well, I just got a minute to sit down in front of the computer to check email and the announcer on the radio, says "it's now 8:46". That's it? I feel like this day should already be at least half over.

The day started off okay, everyone slept-in (I use the term loosely-it was later than 6:30), so that was nice. The older girls came down and got their breakfast while I got R dressed. Then our neighbor brought her daughter over for me to babysit (have I mentioned that I'm back to babysitting again. . . we'll see for how long!). After our lovely start things have been unraveling ever since! The older two keep racing to me to see how can tattle on the tattler. I hate tattling!! So after a refresher course of what tattling is, they settled down. A. found a book to read and G and R went outside while I started dishes. No sooner do I get the dishwasher open, then do I hear G telling R not to sit in her pool. Yes, R's pool didn't get emptied last night, so she was in it having a great time!

New outfit. I'm back to trying to check email once more, when the baby decides that she's going to have a fit about who knows what. I decide it's naptime for her.

Phone rings. It's mom needing me to make a quick run to Costco (is there such a thing?) before the wedding this weekend.

R screams, G screams! The sprinklers have come on while they were playing in the empty pool and now they are wet and scared!

New outfits! And I'm sitting down to finish this blog once and for all so that the day can settle down to normal, I'd even settle for a dull roar at this point! I just glanced at my watch it's only 9:05! It only took me 20 minutes to type this--AHHHH--this day is going to be an eternity!!!

Jam Making: Phase II

Finally we are back to normal (well as normal as we ever get). M and the girls picked the apricots Friday and ended up with over 10 wal-mart bags full. Then he cleaned and sorted them into edibles or jam making cots and then it was up to me to take over! All five of my hugest bowls were overflowing with cots for jam, so I got started Saturday morning. By naptime I had done up 4 batches of jam and still had three bowls left of these things! Blah. So I did a quick search for recipes to use up the remainder and found one for apricot syrup. Sunday morning we woke to the smell of slightly fermenting apricots and I knew that I had to deal with them right now!! So I made up 3 batches of syrup with the cots I could salvage. The rest I had to throw out because they were so smooshed.

Well, yesterday there continued to be a lingering odor of rotten apricots, but I couldn't figure out why til M got home from work. He found the culprit, some bags of fruit that we had saved to eat/give away had been forgotten and had gone bad. He thought we had a good start on some homemade apricot wine! Yikes.

Anyway, final apricot count: 29 jars of jam, 6 jars of syrup and one tired mama!

Jam Making: Phase I

Well, it all started Monday when I defrosted my big freezer for the first time I think ever in it's life. And in doing so, realized that I had oodles more strawberries set aside for jam than I had realized. So I decided that we had better make them up, since our apricot tree is fully loaded and by now, fully ripened and will need to be dealt with this weekend.

So yesterday with my two oldest helpers, and little taste-tester we got the cooked strawberry jam done. Two batches and fifteen half-pints later, I'm wondering if this is such a good idea. Where will we store it?? Then this morning I did up three batches of freezer jam with the remaining strawberries.

The verdict: yummy!! Especially on freshly made biscuits that your husband did up while you were at swimming lessons! Thanks honey! So now it's on to tackle the apricots. . .

Mysterious sounds

Well, apparently there is a noise in the girls' room that is at a frequency only 6 year olds can hear and it only occurs at bedtime. . . hmmm! It sounds like a beep-beep-beep-beep and can only mean one thing: the bad guys have found their room. Yep, that's right, the current theory to this mystery is that bad guys have put something that beeps in the girls' room so that they (the bad guys) know when the girls are in for the night. Pretty tricky bad guys huh? We're still not sure as to why the bad guys need to know if the kids are in bed or not, but I'm sure a plausible answer will be found!

And on to happier news, for the first time in almost a month, G got dressed without a huge temper tantrum, scream-fest, or pout! It was a huge answer to this mother's desperate prayer! Now if we can have another morning like this tomorrow, that would be wonderful, however, I'm not holding my breath!!

Betsy & Tacy Come to Life

One of the highlights of our trip to MN was visiting Deep Valley (aka modern-day Mankato) and seeing the homes of Betsy, Tacy and Tib. A. has enjoyed the books as much as I did as a child and it was so neat for her to be able to see places that were in the books! She climbed up the "big hill" and was bummed that we couldn't go and see "little Syria". And we also got to sit on Betsy and Tacy's infamous park bench, where their friendship began.

Anyway, here are some pictures, they are from top to bottom, Betsy's house, Tacy's house, the park bench, and Tib's house. Enjoy!

I can't take it anymore, revisited

Well, we survived our trip back to the midwest. All of us safe and sound, not well-rested, but that is fairly easy to take care of! Our final flights were late for our poor CST-zone bodies and on our final flight, poor G had HAD it! She was trying to find a comfortable position to sleep and of course, it was touching A's seat. Well, A was in no mood to be gracious (me either!) and this got things going downhill right quick!

I finally decided to break the "rules" and leave my window seat, so I could separate the two warring factions (aka: my girls). Well, long story short, G lost it-screaming and yelling, "I can't take this anymore", "I don't want to sit next to the yucky, stupid window", you get the picture--ugly huh?! I finally get her to calm down and scream into one of the pillows that the nice flight attendants showered us hoping to help us pacify our child. Not two minutes later, sound asleep. Thank you Lord!

I am grateful that we were able to fly and that it only takes 3 hours in the air, rather than 3 days in the car. However, I do send out my apologies to those of you on the fateful flight who had to listen to my daughter!