Because I Can (-Can)

Sometimes I really crack myself up.

I flexed my homemaking muscles yesterday by canning peaches and peas. It was really fun! Probably mostly because I was doing it with family :). Let's see... I don't even remember the last thing I told you. Friday I baby-sat again all day and also took grandma to the doctor's office. That about summed up the day for me. Saturday morning, my mom and I went to the produce market in Tacoma. Totally awesome!!! And some really really awesome prices. We got red, orange, and yellow bell peppers for 50 cents each! Too cool. Usually you pay over 2 bucks for one red pepper. I know, because I have to get one every time I make those confetti pinwheels at girlie parties. I just don't think green peppers (though cheaper) would taste the same. So this was quite the bargain! Anyway, so now we'll have to get the other ingredients to make those. Maybe Tarylyn will host a family girl night at her place since she has a pretty good-sized house. But I digress... As usual. We also got 40 peaches for $10 (yep, 10 dollars!) and 1/2 a flat of blueberries for $17. If it wasn't the end of the season, they would have been $2 cheaper. But, we know for future reference. We also got a bunch of apples, some fresh corn, snow peas, sugar snap peas, bananas, canteloupe, baking potatoes, fresh chicken breast (a huge whole one), and a huge hunk of M&M white fudge (hand-made there at the store) -- because Grandmas and Aunt Hilas always take treats or provide them in some way to the kiddos :). (Plus we get some too ;)). We might have gotten other stuff that I just can't remember right now. But anyway, it all came in under $90! I was highly impressed! After running a few other errands (including a run on Costco... a place I hope to never again go to during the afternoon -- masses of people... it's unreal), we went to Brad and Tarylyn's. The kids were very excited that we were there. Brad was working his weekend of Reserves with the Air Force, but he got home before we were done canning the peaches. This was my first canning experience. What a messy job! But it was lots of fun! And we're going to do applesauce and apple butter next weekend with the apples! As well as making up the stuff for blueberry cobbler and then canning that stuff (kind of like canning pie filling, I guess). We also freezer-locked some of the blueberries tonight to just freeze them whole. So anyway, here are our pictures :):

Do be sure to click on this picture to get others. Otherwise you'll miss the blueberries and also the pictures of the kids eating fudge :). Along with others :). When we got back to Grandma and Grandpa's house, the snails were out on the wall! It was really wild to open the car door and see them all like that. But, yesterday was a rainy day, so I guess that brought them out to "play." The cold has set in for the most part. It will only get colder, of course. Yesterday it rained all day and the temperature never left the 50s I don't think. Of course, with us boiling water in the kitchen all day, we were content with it.

I cooked dinner last night and just made the chicken stir fry with the ramen noodles. Everyone liked it, so I was glad about that. I also called and talked to my dad for about an hour. Told him how things are going up here and all that. He says Dothan is getting cooler weather, which I've also read that on some of my friends' blogs as well. Yay for cooler weather!

Today was church. I helped in the nursery, since it was short-handed and my mom is the Primary President here. It's really weird to go to church at 1 p.m. I like the 9 or 9:30 church times.

Actually, part of the reason we are starting to jump on the wagon of doing lots of canning is because of what has happened with the economy in the past week. It has pretty much scared me. My plan had been to work on getting food storage and all that up and ready once I got my job and got all this debt paid off (including the student loans), but I don't think there's time to wait, and I need to do both at the same time. It frightens me what has happened over the past week with Wall Street and all these banks and mortgage companies, etc. It's not good. And I have talked to my mom and Brad and Tarylyn about wanting to call a family meeting to discuss things and get our plan for how we can be prepared... to pull together to help each other and become prepared as we have been told to do by prophets for years. What a blessing to be warned and given counsel so that we are prepared. For if we are prepared, we shall not fear. Anyone interested in what to store, how long to store it, and how much you should have can visit my "provident living" link under "places I visit on the Web." It's full of great info.

To leave on an up note, tomorrow I take Christina to her doctor's appointment. She's scheduled for an ultra-sound, so maybe she'll know what she's having after tomorrow. I won't share that news, though. That's her news. I'll try to force her to blog about it :).