Happy Thanksgiving!

It hasn't exactly been a normal Thanksgiving!! Last night we had fun grilling hotdogs outside on the deck.

Who would have thought that after a great night of playing games and eating yummy food, that Evie would wake up this morning like this....

Yep, it is chicken pox!! Actually, in honor of Thanksgiving, it is now called "Turkey Pox". Yesterday she started getting a few water blister spots on her. I just figured it was an aftermath from another rash she had the week earlier that was from something she was allergic to. Last night she got a headache, which she never gets. Then she woke up covered from head to toe with the blisters. I had chicken pox my senior year of high school, so I remember it quite well. She has all the symptoms I had. She has spent the day watching tv, itching and feeling pretty crummy. I have been slathering her with stuff all day to keep her as comfortable as possible.

We ate Thanksgiving lunch out with her in the living room. No family came over because she is so contagious. She was really bummed about that. We all relaxed today.

Even with Evie having chicken pox, I still have so much to be thankful for! I feel so blessed to have Christ in my life, to have my family, to live in a free country, to have a nice warm home, to have food in my freezers and pantry, and so much more.

Tech support

We have had such crazy computer issues lately. Sometimes I just want to throw the thing out the window! It seems like whenever we call a place for help (like a computer support place), we get someone who barely speaks English. Our wireless router and Vonage phone got toasted by lightning the week before last, and Jeff had to call Vonage to see about getting a new box. The lady who answered was Indian, and when Jeff told her that our box got struck by lightning, she didn't understand. She did not know what the word lightning was! She just kept asking him over and over again if he wanted to sign up for new service! Jeff called them at the very end of the day, while he was at work, and his co-worker in another cubicle was getting quite a laugh out of listening to Jeff navigate that conversation! So between the computer situation, and the phone situation, I thought this video was quite appropriate for how we have been feeling :). I hope you get as good of a laugh out of it as Jeff and I did!



Okay, I promise this will be the last of the canning pictures for awhile. I just thought they looked pretty, and I hadn't taken any pictures of all of them sitting on the shelves. So bear with me here :). Lol.

Fall

Oh my. Has it really been almost 3 months since I last blogged? Here is the reason. For several months, this has been my "station".... 

I have never canned this much before! I thought I was done after I did the grape juice. Isn't it pretty?

Then Jeff brought in a huge amount of green peppers and tomatoes from the garden. He said, "How about making some more salsa. So I did some more salsa.

I was really starting to feel like this about my canner at this point....

I am so glad to be done with canning!! It is so worthwhile, but so exhausting! We had an overabundance of peppers and tomatoes, so after canning, I froze peppers and dried tomatoes. I'm still trying to figure out how I am going to use the dried tomatoes! The peppers are great frozen. I froze them halved, and then I make stuffed peppers with them. They are yummy! I just need to figure out how to use the dried tomatoes. I dried them because I had so many of them canned that I didn't want to can anymore!

Besides the canning, we have been finishing up with the adoption homestudy. We had our last meeting this past week, so the paperwork is done!! Yippee! They told us that the paperwork on their end of it should be done right after Thanksgiving, so they will be ready to show our profiles to the expectant moms that come in. Wow, it all seems unreal! We are seriously needing to start working on the nursery. We found out today at church that someone has a crib they can give us, so we are so thankful for that! We have tons of clothes...if the baby is a girl! If we have a boy, we have no clothes right now. We also have been trying to come up with names. That has been harder than I remembered. Evie keeps giving her suggestions, and they are usually the names of her dolls :).

I have been amazed at how God has helped me to get stuff done through all of this. I have been able to keep on track with homeschooling, and Evie has been able to do Bible quizzing and homeschool get-togethers. I still have tons of things to do, but I'm trying to pace myself. We are planning on starting on the nursery after Christmas. I am going to have to move the homeschool room to the dining room, which should be interesting!

I hope it won't be months and months before I blog next!