Frost is in the air

Yesterday we got the FREEZE warning, and I'm told that it snowed in the mountains yesterday as well... yuck. Anyways, we harvested much of our garden for Family Home Evening. We did have a mammoth carrot - a la grandpa (I took one of his to kindergarten for show and tell it was so cool). The girls also had their own personal garden in which they planted carrots, and some squashes. The girls won the house award of the best flower garden - theirs was truly amazing and totally beautiful! Our corn (which was just for fun and experimental) came up and we got a few small ears which we are excited to eat. We are still canning tomatoes - we have one box almost ready to go, and two more which are still ripening up! Here are some fun pictures of the garden - the really tall tree like things would be the tomatoes!

Zoo

We spent the day at the zoo earlier this week. I got to chaperone 4 kids throughout the zoo. It was a fairly exhausting day, but it was pretty fun. We got there before the school bus did, so my child and I hung out - here's a picture of her eating her morning snack of Cheeto', and then a picture of our little group. I think everyone's highlight was the carousel - I'm not sure how we could work it into the curriculum, but I know the kids would probably rather do that than the zoo!

More pictures - Finally!!

Well - here we have several new pictures I thought we should post.
First of all we have the first day of school - which is actually a couple of weeks old, but nonetheless.

Time for that weekly blog

So - for those of you who are interested in my life on a daily basis (yes, I know EVERYONE is) you may want to check out my other blog (and if I've already promoted it - apparently I'm pretty proud of it or excited or something). It's my Seminary blog page, where I share what we've done in class each day so that the parents and students, and any nosy person that might want to know what we actually do at 6:00 am at church can follow with our daily chronicles. Actually -... well, at this point I went to bed so I don't know what I was going to say.
I started a pre-school this week with 2 other moms - that is sucking a little life, and yesterday I spent the day at the zoo with a bunch of kids- that was pretty fun, but exhausting. We picked all of our tomatoes this past weekend, and have about 90 lbs of them. I'll be canning them both today and tomorrow, and hopefully be finished for the season. We picked all of our grapes (which experts predicted could not possibly survive the winters and climate) on Monday. We got 11 quarts of grape juice - we can't wait to try them!

Canning Party

This weekend we picked up 88 pounds of peaches. Yesterday morning I was feeling a little overwhelmed as I looked at them and thought about the full next week I'd need to get them taken care of. A friend called, and I mentioned what I was doing, and she volunteered to come over and can. Another friend called and had never canned but wanted to come learn, as did another. We ended up with 5 kids running around playing, while four of us canned. Within 3 and a half hours we ended up with 45 quarts of peaches for the winter. I spent time in the garden yesterday morning picking tomatoes and my husband and I canned 14 quarts of tomatoes last night. We still have tons of tomatoes in the garden - and hope to get at least 45-50 quarts this year. The exciting part is that we started these plants indoors from seeds back in March - so it's been really fun to see them develop into the taller than me trees that we've got now. The 35 quarts that we got last year went quickly and we had to ration them!! We are also praying that it stays warm enough that all of the raspberries will ripen for jam, and we are looking at harvesting the grapes within the week. On Monday we picked apples from a friend's, and I will be doing lots and lots of applesauce today. It's been so awesome to produce our own food, and store it up for the winter. There's nothing more reassuring than looking at a full food storage, and knowing how hard you've worked, planting, growing and canning... what a reward!!
On another note, the girls are busy with school and gymnastics. Seminary is finally starting to settle into a routine. Our power went out for a second yesterday and the messed up the alarm clock. When I reset it, for some reason it rang at 12:01 am. Just as I was getting into the shower I looked at my watch and realized that it was NOT 4:30 am. I got back into bed - relieved, because it felt like I'd only slept for an hour and a half... funny thing!
My husband applied for an internal job promotion yesterday - he was told that there should be an offer by the end of the week - this has definitely taken an emotional toll since we first learned about the possibility the first week of August, but we are hoping that it all comes to fruition.
We will be traveling 3 hours away for our stake conference this weekend.
That's pretty much our life in a nutshell this week!

School has finally started

Well, school has started and life seems to be settling back into it's normal hum drum (which is always so welcome at the end of the summer). My schedule has changed - I was going to say drastically, but I just realized, it isn't that different! I used to get up at 4:45 every morning to go walking. Now I get up at 4:30 to get ready for Seminary. I leave right about 5:30, and get there between 15 - 8 minutes before 6:00 a.m. I then come home, get my daughter off to school and begin my day. I'm still trying to figure out where to fit in the rest of my schooling. I've got a final I'll take this Friday, and then one class left. I've just GOT to get it done. I'm starting up a pre-school with a couple of other moms, and have to get it up and running. I've started walking at 8:00 pm. The only problem is that by the time I get home, I'm ready to start my day! I was grateful last night when I got home, showered, collapsed in bed and was instantly asleep, and slept great. It's just tough to actually get my buns into bed by 9:30. Well... its 10 in the morning and I'm yawning - that should tell you something! Yes - precisely, I live for school holidays!