Nature Studies

Another weekend has come and gone.  Such a nice Sabbath day we had!  Since we were having a husband/wife singing group come in the afternoon we had our monthly 4th Sabbath potluck meal on the 5th Sabbath instead.  They did a nice job and blessed us with their music.


After church we had our friends, the L family, come over to visit and have a light supper with us.  Whitney and Brandon were here as well.  It was a good time of fellowship and laughter. 


On Sunday we went to Fargo (again!!) for a young couple's wedding reception.  They had a "destination" wedding in Dominic Republic a few weeks ago.  The pictures from their wedding looked like something out of a dream...very nice.


Daniel had been mentioning that his shoes were hurting his feet.  After the reception we went shoe shopping.  We found a couple pair with Velcro that were comfortable for him.  Why Velcro when he does know how to tie his shoes?  Because...he isn't taking the time to properly put on his shoes and tie them.  Instead he is bending down the backs and running outside like that.  I'm hoping since the Velcro will speed up the process he won't feel the need to do this with the new shoes.


The stores were only open until 6:00 so I didn't make it to Sam's in time to get more of their delicious peaches.  I still have two left so that leaves me with one for breakfast today and one for tomorrow.  I will be okay but I did want to get some for Brandon as he loves peaches as much as I do.


Yesterday morning I woke to see Brandon sleeping on the couch.  I didn't hear him come in Saturday night but was happy he was here.  He got up early and went to work for the day for my uncle and my cousin's husband at a farm near here.  I'm glad he is willing to earn extra money that way.  He ate breakfast with me.  We both had a peach and an English muffin.


This morning while I was reading Kris blog I noticed a familiar blog on her list.  Then I remembered that I used to read it before my computer crashed.  I had the address saved on my favorites list but all that was gone after the crash.  So I made sure to add it to my blog list this morning.  Barb keeps an online nature journal of their nature studies.  Since we are supposed to do a nature walk each week in our school this helps me get ideas.  We have participated in a few of the nature challenges.  I'm so glad to find her blog again.


I have plenty lined up that I want to accomplish today so I had best get busy doing some of it.

More tomatoes!

This Sunday I had the most tomatoes to process at one time. I had about 18 gallons to put through the juicer. This is what my counter looked like by the time I was finished juicing.



While I am still juicing I start cooking it down to sauce. I had my two big kettles going all morning and finished around 3:00. I got 6 kettles full of juice.

The juice that didn't originally fit into the two kettles I poured into this huge kettle which has the capacity of 4 kettles full of the other size. I don't use this for cooking much as it has such a thin bottom and would scorch easily.

I processed jars in my canner 3 times, not full each time. I usually get 4-5 quarts from 2 kettles full of sauce that I cooked down. I had one jar break the second canner full. That makes such a mess! I ended up with 14 quarts of sauce by the end of the day.

Brandon was home for the weekend and left for Fargo around 4:00. I think it has been harder for me yesterday and today than it was last week probably because he left from home. Last week I left from his place. He was a good help to Tim on Sunday. They took the wood stove chimney down from the roof and cleaned it well. Then they had to lower the wood stove and take the inside stack off and clean it outside. It definitely is a two man job.

Today we are back to school. The next two weeks in geography we are studying about Mexico. The children got their (fake) passports today and we left on an airplane for Mexico. We hit a little turbulence on the way and they really enjoyed that. When we got there I put a Mexican flag sticker on the first page in their passports and we read a couple books about Mexico. It was a good day. Tomorrow we will attempt to make a pinata.

Leah did her ABC puzzle almost by herself. She is great about knowing the names and sounds of the capital letters and writing them. The lower case letters are a little more difficult for her but she did well. Of course Daniel used it as a road for his Lego truck.



Here the children are drawing a desert picture in their nature notebooks. Both drew some great cacti.

For music we are using Wee Sing Around The World. Both children and I are enjoying it more than the patriotic songs we learned last year. While the former were important to learn these are just more fun.

I've got some fry sausage and bow tie noodles cooking. I had better feed my hungry crew.