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.