Canning, drying, eating fruit...

I started canning peaches, pears & beets last Tuesday and finally finished Saturday night. I started with 11 boxes of produce. It was one of the longest weeks of my life, but it is over now and we have lots to show for all the effort. We have 90 quarts of fruit, 9 bottles of pickled beets and two bags of dried pears (those are the best!!). Plus some raspberry-peach jam, plain raspberry jam and several pans of peach crisp. I'm going to make peach-banana jam tomorrow. We still have some fresh fruit that we will eat up over the next few days - I just wish the harvest season lasted longer because I LOVE pears.

Last Friday was another Girls' Night Out. We celebrated Sherilyn Mills' birthday (she's the birthday queen with the crown). The party was themed after Dr. Seuss' book "Oh! the Places You'll Go." We ended up at Applebee's for half price appetizers and had a blast. Of coarse, we all ate too much, but it was well worth it.

I looked out the window this afternoon and saw Evan helping Brett mow the lawn. It was so cute! Brett was patient with him and let him help push for as long as Evan wanted, even though it took 2-3 times longer to get the lawn done. I pray that they will love each other like this forever.

Here's a helpful hint for every day living: If you are driving up the freeway at 70 mph it is possible for a gust of wind to knock a brand new, $900, 200 pound LG front loading washing machine out of the back of a pick-up truck. And, no, the styrofoam packaging and box do not protect it from the impact on the hard, black pavement as it tumbles like a basketball down the fast lane. In fact the styrofoam "explodes" into little white pieces and looks like snow as it is blown around by all the passing cars. It was a rough day.

Fastest Kid in the Tri-Cities Race

Last Saturday one of the local high schools sponsored a "Fastest Kid in the Tri-Cities Race" to help raise money for their boys' cross-country team to go to an invitational down in California. Kehli was so excited to race - she is our runner, always beating everyone in P.E. She has endurance that I wish I could borrow sometimes! Erin chose to race also. Brett is too old (it only went through 6th grade) and Bubba wasn't interested, until it started and it was too late to register. Each race was divided into grade levels. Kehli's coarse was 1/2 mile and she ran it in 4.07 minutes and Erin had to run a whole mile finishing in 9.40 minutes. They both took second in their grade levels. The only two girls that beat each of them were daughters to a cross-country coach from another high school. I could hear their mom at the end of the race say, "that was good, but it took 3.55 minutes." I looked down to realize that I hadn't even worn a watch - I didn't realize how serious some people were about it! There is a boy from our church, Bram Holladay, that is on the cross-country team that ran with both Erin & Kehli. He was a HUGE help and I don't think they would have done as good if he wasn't along side them encouraging them to keep running. It was a fun morning that they kids are already looking forward to next year.

Morrow County OHV - Camping

This Labor Day weekend we tried out a new campground. It is down by Heppner, Oregon and was just over 2 hours away. You could ride anywhere in the park as long as it was on a road. There were different tracks for different ages. Mark joined the poker ride. When he signed up he got his first card. Then there was a 30 mile course with 3 check points along the way where he got 3 additional cards. Then when he completed the course and checked back in he got his final card. He ended up having two pairs and coming in third out of almost 70 people. He won one of those portable tent/canopy things - we'll use it over the dirt pile to keep the kids in the shade. This picture doesn't show it too good, but Mark looked like he had a beard when he got back from the poker run. He was totally filthy where his helmet and goggles weren't covering him.

The kids had a blast. Brett was off on his dirt bike ALL day so he was never around to take pictures of. He loved the over 15 track and spent most of the day there until someone got hurt and they started enforcing the rules. He's complained the last few days about being sore from riding. Erin rode off and on all day. She enjoyed making "crafts" out of whatever she could find on the ground. At one point she found a little water snake and kept it until we convinced her that it would die if she kept carrying it around.

Kehli hasn't enjoyed riding since she ran into Mark a little while ago on her dirt bike. She wasn't hurt, but apparently it scared her enough to want to take a break.

Evan spent most of his time climbing up and down off Kehli's bike since it stayed parked in one spot. He was in his heaven - he went from dirt bike to four-wheeler and then back to dirt bike the whole time we were there. He even had to eat his breakfast on one! It won't be long until he's ready for his own ride (with training wheels of coarse)!