No more APPLES!!!

I would not shed a single tear if I never saw another apple again. Honestly. The last week in October, one of our neighbors organized to get some Fuji apples from Washington. When they arrived, he emailed everyone that was interested, and he was selling them for $0.45/lb.! I couldn't pass that up, and since my kids LOVE the homemade applesauce that we made before, I decided to go and get some. I came home with 100 lbs of apples. That was a Friday, and all day Saturday was spent peeling, coring, cooking, blending and bottling these apples. I managed to get 68 pint jars of applesauce. Wow. They still had some apples left on Monday, so I decided to go get just a few more, so we could eat them, and I could try and make some apple pies. I just couldn't pass up the 45 cents a pound price tag. I knew Jared was going to be gone all week for work, so I didn't want to get too many. On Monday, I came home with another 100 pounds of apples!!! What was I thinking?!?! I did go and buy an apple peeler this time though. Those things are so cool! With this 100 pounds, I made apple butter, apple juice, and 1 lonely apple pie. I am pleased to announce, that all of the apples are finally out of our house. Well, except for the 20 or so that are in the fridge for the kids to eat. I am so over apples......until next year at least. ;)

My Heritage

I did this with all 3 of my kids, and Natalie's and Jacob's said the same thing, but Cody looked 19% more like Jared. I can tell, but I thought Natalie had a little more of me in her. Guess not.

My first tutorial :) Doll Cradle

I don't know if anyone would be interested in learning how to do this simple doll cradle, but I made it anyway. First, you need an oatmeal canister, or mashed potato canister. I chose mashed potatoes, because that one was bigger for our family. :) Make sure it is clean and dry. Glue the lid closed on it.



Then, leaving both ends intact, cut half of the canister away. Lines don't have to be perfectly straight.

Lay it on it's side, to make sure it rocks okay. Straighten up the edges if you are a perfectionist. ;)

Decorate any way you want. You can cover it with paper, or scrap fabric, or leave it plain. I haven't decorated this yet. Natalie saw it, and wanted it immediately. Add a "mattress" which for us was just some rolled up scrap fleece. Make a little pillow if you want. I used the same scrap fleece. Add a baby and a blanket, and give it to your little one. Our blanket was the same scrap of fleece. :) Natalie plays with this all day long, and has for a little more than 2 weeks now. I should decorate it more, but eh..she likes it plain, and I am being craft-lazy.

Crafty Moms

You might have noticed I added a button to my blog. You might not have noticed. You might not even care. But, go take a look at this blog. It is awesome! They have a ton of cute stuff, that moms make, and sell to try to get a little more cash in their wallets. I absolutely love their tote bags. I am saving up for one. They have cute bows, hats, headbands, diaper/wipes cases, binky clips, tutu's and a ton more! Nice ladies to work with too. Go check it out! By the way, they are also having a giveaway too. ;) Just don't enter, so I have a better chance of winning. Just kidding. You have every right to enter and win, so go. Go. Go.

Apples

Last weekend, we were trying to come up with something to do with the kids, that was pretty much free. I had just come back from my provident living meeting earlier that day, where we happened to be talking about apples. Did you know, there is a TON of stuff you can do with apples? I didn't. You can make applesauce, apple butter, apple jelly, apple syrup, apple pies, or just plain bottled apples. So, I decided we would take a drive up to Zoin National Park. Right before Zion, is a little town called Springdale. They have an apple orchard there. You can pick your own apples, and then pay for them. We ended up picking almost 60 lbs of apples! I don't have any pics of us picking, because I forgot the camera, but I do have a picture of what I did with them. For the next 2 days, Jared and I sat at the table, and peeled and cored all of those apples! I made and bottled applesauce and apple butter. They are sooooo much better than the store bought kind. I think I have spoiled Natalie a bit, and now she won't even eat the store bought kind. So, you are probably wondering how much applesauce you can make with 60 lbs of apples. Well, I will tell you.


All of this is applesauce. There are 24 pint jars, and almost 9 quart jars. I did end up using 4 of the quart jars to make the apple butter. I don't have a picture of that though. Jared keeps joking about us going back and getting more apples. I think he has forgotten how much work goes into it. :) I think he is suffering from a case of apple-picking amnesia. Don't they look pretty though? They are different colors, because I added cinnamon to the first 2 rows, the next 2 are natural, and some of the big ones, I added apple pie spice to. We all like the natural ones the best. The cinnamon is okay, but I think it kind of dulls the sweetness of the natural apples.

Patriot's Day

In celebration of Patriot's Day, Cody's school did a little flag ceremony. They had one student from each class stand in a line between some police officers, firemen, and military personnel. Cody was the student that was picked in his class. His teacher called me the night before, and told me that she picked him, because his behavior has been so excellent in class, and he is just doing great! I was very glad to hear that, since we have been struggling with his behavior at home a bit. Anyway, here is Cody standing in his place in line. He is close to the flag pole end of the line.

They started passing down a folded flag, and as the flag was passed down the line, they would salute to the next person in line. Here is Cody recieving the flag from a police officer. I didn't get a picture of him saluting to the next one in line, because my camera is too slow. :( After the flag reached the flag pole, they had the kindergardeners help raise the flag, and then the ceremony started. I thought it was pretty cool, and an honor to be picked. I am glad for Cody, and I hope he remembers this for a little bit. At least I have pictures for when he does forget. :)

Movies

I am not an anal person by nature. I am not a neat freak. I do not enjoy cleaning in the slightest degree. I let my house get way beyond the point of needing to be cleaned, in hopes of someone else stepping up to the plate, so I don't have to. But this....

Drives me completely batty!!! This is Natalie's latest obsession. She likes to take the DVD's off the shelf, and stack them either on the couch, floor, or a near by stool. She will spend up to 30 minutes stacking and putting back these DVD's. And in toddler time....30 minutes is like hours!

Now here is where my anal, obsessive-compulsive tendencies seep through. I have every single one of those dvd's in alphabetical order. The top 2 shelves are parent movies, and the middle 2 shelves are the kids movies. All 4 of those shelves are usually full. Every evening, Jared tries to help clean them up with me, but it just irritates me more. He doesn't put them back where they go, he just shoves them in, so then I have to go back, and redo it. I do this every day. I really hope this phase doesn't last too long. I am getting really tired of it. Maybe I should try and find a way to turn off that "anal about movie location" attitude. But then, you look at that sweet face, and how can you get mad at it? That is her saying 'cheese' by the way. Isn't she adorable? I think so. :) Just don't mind the messy hair. She pulled it out during nap time. *grr*

First day of School

Well, technically it was Cody's 4th day of school, but that is only because I am a major scatterbrained slacker, and kept forgetting to take his picture. And, did you notice....no pink shoes!! Actually I am pretty sure he would have been wearing his bright pink shoes if he didn't happen to lose them 2 weeks before at his grandma's house. I honestly have no idea how a pair of shoes can get up and walk off all by themselves, but they did. Seriously, we spent 45 minutes looking for those dang shoes, and they were NOWHERE! Even now, we still can't find them. So, he had to settle for his army shoes.

It was however, Jacob's first day of preschool. :) WAHOO!!! I promise that shirt was clean when he put it on about 5 minutes before I took this picture. That kid can't keep anything clean for more than a few seconds.

Here is the duo. Don't they look so excited to go to school? Jacob was terrified. He was hugging my arm as tightly as his little arms could grab. I walked him to the door, and went inside with him. He got teary-eyed when he found out I was leaving him there, and I wouldn't be staying. Made me a little sad, but not sad enough to stay. :) I told him I had to go get milk at the store, and I would be back for him in a little bit. Since he was only there for an hour the first day, it wasn't too bad. I went to walmart, and grabbed some milk, and some christmas presents for him, and went back to pick him up. He was so excited to see me, and finally admitted that he had lots of fun at school.

Since I took the boys school shopping for backpacks, little miss copycat wanted a 'pack-pack' too. So, I did what any doting mother would do, and went to the thrift store and found her this little cute purse for $0.25. She carries this thing around with her constantly! She has her little cell phone in there, and a bag of cereal, and usually you can find her trying to stuff her sippy cup in there as well. When she can't fit something in there, she will usually yell as loud as she can and eventually throw it across the room if you don't help her quick enough. I don't know where she got her temper. ;)

Sun Oven

I have a new toy. Being of the LDS faith, we are encouraged to have some food storage for those "what if.." moments in life. Of course, we have been taking our sweet time getting there, but we are trying. We get a little bit each month, and our storage is growing nicely. One day, Jared happened to mention to me, that if we had no power, we wouldn't be able to cook very many things before our propane tank on the BBQ grill was empty. We really don't want to have to store a year's supply of propane or charcoal for many different reasons, so we were trying to come up with something else. We have watched numerous food storage videos, and presentations, and kept coming in contact with the Global Sun Oven. We did our own research, and when our church congregation put a group order together, and this was on there, we jumped at the opportunity to save some money on it.

Of course, just like any child, as soon as it came, I openend the box to "play" with my new toy. This is what I made:


These happen to be extremely yummy whole wheat cinnamon rolls. I got the recipe from my grandmother this summer while up at her house for her 60th wedding anniversary. I adapted it a bit, since the recpie calls for white bread flour. I wanted to make them a little healthier, and my wheat bucket is just staring at me to be put to use. I got out my wheat grinder, and ground up the necessary amount of flour that I would need, and put everything into the bread maker. I really should try the conventional way sometime, since if we were without power, I wouldn't be able to use my bread machine....oh well. One step at a time. :)

I then situated the sun oven out on my driveway, and got to baking. This is what it looked like after they were done. I forgot to take a picture of them outside, so I reenacted the scene on the table, out of reach of little grabby hands.

I have to say, these were sooooo good! I have never glazed these cinnamon rolls, because to me, they are plenty sweet without them, and my kids and I don't need the extra sugar. ;) If you would like to have this recipe, just leave me a comment, and I will email it to you. Even if you don't like wheat bread and things, you can still make these with white flour. They are just as good. I promise. I have made them both ways.

Favorite shirt

I know everyone has a favorite shirt. Well, mine was recently retired with a little nudging from my sister. :( I had that shirt for 12 years. It was thin, had some little holes, and oh so comfy. It was a sad, sad day when I finally got up the courage to throw it in the trash. I got a little teary eyed as I watched the garbage truck take it away. I know it is only a shirt, but the memories from that shirt, those are what I felt I was throwing away. Silly me didn't even take a picture of the shirt to remember it by. Oh well....life goes on right?

Here is my shirt on my birthday last year. You can kinda see it. I think I wore this shirt home from the hospital for every one of my births.