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!

Curly pics

I took a few pics yesterday of my waves. I haven't started using the Rockin' Ringlets yet because it hasn't come in the mail, but I am using the Confident Coils. It is really bringing my waves out. It is a sample packet, and it is almost gone, so I am looking forward to getting the bottles in the mail. For some reason, when my hair is all forward, it looks so much shorter!! It is actually about 3 inches from tailbone, but it looks ways shorter than that with it all pulled forward. Sorry the first pic is a little blurry..

I have been dehydrating herbs a lot, and have quite a bit stored now. I am dehydrating chocolate mint, spearmint and stevia from the garden. Boy does it smell good! I loooooove my Excalibur dehydrator!

Here are some pics of my stuff I already canned.  I just love how it all looks on the shelf :).

Here is my super crammed freezer. I'm not sure if I can put much more in here. Maybe a few packages here and there.

We just bought 1 1/2 bushels of pears. They are ripening pretty quick, so I will probably be making pearsauce on Monday. Pears and apples are a lot of work. It is going to be interesting trying to do that and homeschool too. It is going to be some long days next week!

So much to do.....

We are just all tired out! lol :).

I haven't had much time to blog lately. I finally finished all the paperwork for the adoption, and we are sending it this week!! Yay!! Between that, and canning, it has been a really busy time. I canned 20 pints of salsa, 28 quarts of pickles, 25 quarts of peaches, and 7 quarts of tomato sauce so far, along with drying herbs. See why I am not blogging? lol! The garden has been so good this year. I am so thankful. My tomatoes have been late, but I have been getting some from Jeff's parents. Mine are loaded on the vines, but are just now turning. I am only going to do sauce and chunks. I am done with salsa. I still have applesauce, pearsauce and grape juice to do, so fall is going to be busy!

We start homeschooling tomorrow. I had planned on starting it in August, but I wanted a little bit more vacation time. This time around, we are NOT going to homeschool year round! That did not work well at all. The breaks during the year were great, but once summer hit, it was so hard to get it done! We didn't get our 180 days in until the end of July, but we did finish. This time I am hoping to go Labor Day through Memorial Day, with very few breaks in between. That way we get a long summer.

On a hair related note, I am trying some new products to try and bring out my curls. They are from Jessicurl. Since I am trying to save as much money as I can for the adoption, I sold a bunch of stuff on eBay to get the money for the hair products :). I ordered this stuff called Rockin Ringlets, and Confident Coils. I had a sample of the Confident Coils, and was so happy with the results! My waves really came out, and stayed very nice without frizz. If I worked on it, I could get some nice curls too. I was fighting the wavies before, but decided again to try and embrace them. My hair is just not ever going to be straight unless I straighten it with a flat iron, which takes way too much time and kills the hair. So, I guess I'm a wavy girl!

Summer

It has been really hot here for the past few weeks. My garden is loving the heat, except for my broccoli. I have been picking green beans every few days, and it has been slowing down a little. So far I have frozen them instead of canned them. This picture was taken after a really good day of picking.

I really need to take some more pictures of the garden. I am getting a lot of peppers, zucchini, yellow squash and cucumbers. I am hoping to make dill pickles tomorrow. My herbs are coming on, and I have been dehydrating them. My favorite right now is chocolate mint :). My tomatoes are loaded down, but are still green. I looooooove summer gardening!

My mother-in-law and I went last week and picked blueberries on the second hottest day of the year. Ugh! We were dripping wet after 2 hours. We bought the rest. We picked around 15 pounds each, and bought another 50. They were organic again this year, and they are really yummy. I froze all but 5 pounds. My freezer is getting really full!

The 4H Fair rolled around again, and it hasn't been as horribly hot for it this week, which is nice. We went over the weekend, and had a fun day of seeing the animals and riding some of the ride. This year's strange fair food had to be deep fried Kool-Aid. Seriously? You could top that off with deep fried butter (another high health fair food treat). Wow, just typing the words "deep fried butter" makes me feel like I gained a few pounds. Obviously we didn't try either one of those things. Jeff and I tried deep fried candy bars one year, because a friend told us they were great. We couldn't finish them. I think it was a years worth of sugar and fat all rolled into one artery clogging fried candy bar.

Evie decided to have a little humor with Daisy. I didn't know how funny this picture was until after I looked at it on my computer. I could not stop laughing. She wore that thing for about 20 minutes without taking it off, but she had that same look on her face the entire time!

I wanted to thank you all for your comments and prayers regarding the miscarriage. My body has healed well, and I feel better. I am still dealing with some fatigue, but it is getting better every day. The sadness is still there, but it is lessening as time goes on. Thank you all for caring!

Getting into the groove of things

I have been neglecting my blog. I have been really busy since school started. So much going on! I started homeschooling after Labor Day, and it has gone pretty well so far. There is so much more involved with 3rd grade compared to K-2nd. It takes us 3-4 hours to get everything done. Evie is learning Spanish this year, and was doing great until I hooked up the headphones to the computer. Now she has to speak it, and if she doesn't get it just right, the computer will give her this beep sound. Then she will get frustrated and groan into the mic, and it will beep again :). Lol. She got pretty fed up with it today. It is really picky about the pronunciation, which is hard for a 8 year old. Besides homeschooling, Evie is in gymnastics and horseback riding, so we have been busy running from place to place.

Jeff and I started having a date night every Friday night, and that has been fun! We have a babysitter come for about 3 hours, and we go out to eat. Lately we have been hanging out together at coffee houses. It has been fun being able to reconnect with each other after being apart for all those months.

Bow season started a few weeks ago, but it has been so hot that the deer haven't been moving much. Jeff did get a deer about a week and a half ago. He got it right before he left for a business trip, so he wasn't able to help butcher the deer. I decided I wanted to try making venison broth, so I asked his dad to save me some bones with meat on it. He gave me a bag full after we got done butchering, and I was too tired to notice it much. I just stuck it in the fridge when I got home. I got up the next morning to cook it up, and when I opened the bag, I found that he had given me whole legs....not cut up! So I had these 3 foot long deer legs that I am supposed to try and fit in a stock pot. He must have thought I had a HUGE stock pot! I shoved them in the pot, and was hysterically laughing because these deer legs were sticking out of the pot. I told Jeff later that I felt like I was cooking up body parts, and he said, "Well, you were!" I finally took the legs out of the pot and tried to cut them up. After much work, I finally managed to get them in the pot without sticking out. I cooked up 20 quarts of broth. I used my pressure canner, and all but 1 jar sealed. I used the broth to make gravy over the weekend, and it made the most wonderful gravy!

I had a wicked computer virus, and Jeff had to completely wipe my computer. I had to hand write down websites I wanted to keep and my favorites list. The virus was so bad that we didn't want to risk reinfecting the computer by copying anything onto a disc. It seems to be working so much better now.

Well, this isn't the most exciting post ever. Sorry if I bored you all :).

Crazy busy last week!

It has been a wild last week at our house. First, Jeff got offered a job about 2 miles from our house that he couldn't refuse. He ended up taking the job and quitting his other job. He left on such good terms with his job that he quit, that they want him to do contract work for them in the winter! He started his new job this past Tuesday, and he had a really good first week. He gets to come home for lunch every day, which has been SO awesome! Love it!! God is so good, and has blessed so much. We are so thankful!

My garden tomatoes weren't coming on very well, so we bought 2 bushels of tomatoes that were heirloom organic tomatoes at a roadside stand. We got a really good price on them. I canned 20 jars of chunk tomatoes and 11 jars of tomato sauce. I also canned 30 jars of pearsauce, and froze 1/2 bushel of green beans. Now my garden tomatoes are taking off, so I'm not sure what I will do with them! I'm thinking about just canning them into sauce. We just bought apples, so this week I will start canning applesauce. The last thing I will can is grape juice. Here are my shelves, which are getting very full!

Trying to fit in homeschooling this past week was a challenge because of all the canning, and also because we found out the cats were infested with fleas! I have flea dipped them twice since Tuesday, and at the last bath we killed 40 fleas between the two of them. The natural flea shampoo we bought was completely worthless. It didn't kill them at all, so I tried orange oil (called Orange TKO). It repelled the fleas, which made them jump off the cats. Some of the fleas jumped out in the water and drowned, but most of them jumped off when we toweled the cats off. Evie was my helper! She would see one and go, "There's one!" and either she or I would pick it up and stick it under the water in the tub. We were amazed at how many we were able to get! I'm planning on dipping the cats again on Tuesday. I need something that kills the fleas, but I don't want tons of chemicals. I am going to try Dawn dish soap next. I read that it is supposed to kill fleas on contact. The dog is pretty much under control now. I have only seen (and killed) a few fleas on her in the past several days. I have been vacuuming the house every day. So far we haven't seen a flea, except for a few in the cannister after we dump it after vacuuming. Jeff got bit by one once, but Evie and I haven't. So I am trying to keep the fleas from infesting the house. I feel like I need to have a clone because there is so much to do!!

Evie lost her top tooth last week, and looks so cute with her gap :).

Fun and busy days

It has been such a busy time at our house these past few weeks! It has been wonderful having Jeff home every night! I love being able to eat dinner together each night. His new job is going well, and he is really liking it. We are so thankful for that! I have been busy canning, getting stuff ready to homeschool, and de-flea'ing our dog. Poor Si Si was covered with fleas. I kept checking her because she kept chewing on herself, but I couldn't find any fleas. Well, I must not have been looking well enough because she was covered. So I had to flea dip her (I found some natural stuff), then I put some more stuff down her back (also natural). I have also been vacuuming every day. Evie took this picture tonight after I had just checked her for the 3rd time today, and after we had just been outside on a walk. She looks all tuckered out :).















I have been canning peaches. I have never canned them before. Evie was such a HUGE help! She helped me peel the skins after I put them in the boiling water and then the cold water.













I canned a bushel of peaches over 2 days, and got 27 quart jars. Each one sealed! Yay! I have learned to pray over my jars, and I pray that they will seal. That may sound funny, but I believe God cares about even the little things :).















I just got a bushel and a half of pears, so I am going to be busy for awhile! I canned 23 pints of salsa, so that is done. Evie helped me with that too. She has been my little canning helper this year. When she isn't helping me, or playing with friends, Evie likes to pass the time playing dolls. And she likes Daisy to feel like she is part of the playtime!













This past weekend, we went with Jeff's parents to Michigan and Ohio for a mini vacation. We went to Cabela's in Dundee, MI. I wish I would have taken my camera to that place! Wow, it was awesome! Then we went to the Toledo Zoo, which was amazing. It is ranked one of the top 3 zoo's in the nation, and I can see why. It was an awesome zoo!


Evie was really afraid of this polar bear at first, but got brave after we had been there awhile :).




















We loved the polar bears. They had a beautiful underwater viewing area so we could see them swim. This one was the mama bear.















The baby's name was Siku, and he is the only polar bear cub in a U.S. zoo. I wish I could have gotten a better picture of him (he was jumping in the water). He didn't stay still for very long!














The wolves were probably my favorite. They are so beautiful.

































It was Jeff's parents 45th wedding anniversary. We were glad we were able to spend the time with them.






























































They had a fabulous aquarium there. Jeff took this great picture of a Clown Fish inside an anemone.














Here is the drenched family! It sprinkled the whole time we were there, which was nice because we stayed cool. By the time we left, it was raining pretty hard. We went at a good time!














The gorilla's were fascinating. This big guy just stared at us. He was huge!



















He was looking right at me. I'm thinking he didn't like me taking his picture!















Look at the other crazy gorilla's that were at the zoo!














Evie "hatching" out of an egg :).













My blog posts have been really long lately. I hope I am not boring you all! It is nice to have something to write about! I didn't really want to write much when Jeff and I were apart. I guess I felt too sad. I'm so thankful we are together as a family again!

Summer

Today is an exciting day! My hubby quit his job today, and is coming home for good tonight! He didn't give a 2 weeks notice because they are closing down the company anyways, and he didn't have anything to do. I am so thankful to God for His goodness to us. I get to have my hubby back :)!!

I haven't been the best blogger this summer, so I will try and throw a bunch of stuff into one blog post :). We had a fun time this year at our local 4H fair. We had beautiful weather, and it was a little cooler, so we didn't roast. Evie got to ride several rides, and we got to see all the animals. I especially loved the llamas, which I didn't get to see last year. This is only the second year they have been at our fair. They are sooo sweet! If we had land, I would love to have some. They have the softest hair, and the sweetest, most gentle eyes. Love them! Here are some fair pics...






















































Our garden has been doing great, but is still a bit behind. My pole beans (which are climbing the fence and are going over the fence into the neighbors yard!) have flowered and are ready to start coming on. The zucchini plants were huge this year, but I didn't get as many zucchini as I would have liked. They are in front of the beans.















My green pepper plants are HUGE! They are almost to my shoulders! They are producing beautifully. I used them to make salsa this week :). The smaller pepper plants are ones I planted from seed. They are red, purple and orange, and they are all loaded with little peppers. I can't wait until they turn colors and get bigger. I have been trying to freeze a lot of the peppers for winter.













My tomatoes are also huge, and are loaded. Many are still green, but a lot of them started turning the past few days.














This picture of my pumpkins is about a week old. They are taking over the garden! They are now overlapping my potatoes, carrots and tomato plants! And they are LOADED! I bet I have at least 50 pumpkins growing out there. The variety I got is called Long Island Cheese. They are supposed to be shaped like a wheel of cheese! They are supposed to store well. I wish I could can it. Everything I have read about canning pumpkin sounds dangerous. They said it was the #1 cause of botulism in home canning. Yikes! Freezing is a option. I may do that. I may just store them in the basement where it is cool. That is what the pioneers did! It looks like we are going to be eating a lot of pumpkin!!













I canned green beans today. I got some from my neighbor. I canned 6 pints. I canned salsa yesterday. My neighbor gave me a bunch of tomatoes, so I wanted to make some salsa. I canned 13 pint jars.














Here is the start of my canning shelf. Please excuse the massive mess of a shelf down below! You can see my salsa. I also canned some jellies, and the beans I canned this past winter. There is also grape juice from last year. I hope to make some more of that. I still have a ways to go with canning. I'm hoping to can some tomatoes, and more beans. I would really like to can some chickens too. I love seeing full shelves of homemade canned goods :)

Winter canning

We are pretty much snowed in right now, with about a foot of snow on the ground. It sure is beautiful! Evie has been going out in the snow all bundled up, playing with Sierra. I have been busy trying something new...canning beans! We have a whole bunch of dried beans that I haven't been using because it is so much of a pain to prepare them. I started looking online at how easy they were to pressure can, and so much easier to use after they have been canned. So today I canned kidney beans. I did 7 quart jars, and I have 10 pint jars in the canner right now. I am soaking 5 pounds of navy beans to can tomorrow, and after that pinto beans. So I should be busy for the next few days! Beans that I have soaked and cooked have always given us some digestive issues, but for some reason the canned beans from the store don't seem to bother us. I'm hoping the home canned ones will work the same way as the store bought canned ones for us.

No job news at all. We were blessed with the biggest tax refund we have ever gotten, which was such a God thing. It will help us a lot. We have been living on 401K money, which isn't ideal, but at least we are able to keep our house and stay here until Jeff gets a job. It has been almost 8 months now. That seems unreal. The jobs in this area have been pretty scarce. Jeff has been looking elsewhere, but we still believe God could bring a job for us here. The waiting is hard, but I really do enjoy having my husband home with me :).

Blueberries

We went blueberry picking today at a local patch. Jeff's mom went with us, and it was gorgeous weather to pick. Normally when I have picked blueberries in the past, it has been about 90 degrees outside. Today was in the 70's and gorgeous.













This was Evie's first time picking blueberries, and she did amazing! We were in the patch for almost 3 hours, and she picked the whole time. She got bored near the end, and started complaining, but I thought she did so well. She ate about half the patch though :). I kept teasing her that they were going to weigh her afterwards and then charge us for the berries she ate. The patch we picked at had certified organic blueberry bushes, so we didn't think a thing about eating them off the bush. Normally when we have picked in the past, the berries have had a lot of pesticides on them, so I haven't wanted to eat too many without washing them.













The berries were beautiful this year. The berries were really big, and were slightly tarty. I had wanted to pick 40 pounds, and when we got done and had them weighed, I found out we picked exactly that! We got home around 1:30, and I started washing and freezing the blueberries. I kept out several pounds for us to eat fresh. Here are 3 of the 4 bags of blueberries we picked.













When I got done, I put 23 packages in the freezer. I still had 22 packages in the freezer from last year. Last year I bought 80 pounds, which was way more than I needed. This is a picture of my packed freezer, with the new blueberries on the top shelf.