Busy B

Keith went shopping (grocery etc) with Kev Saturday morning before Noah and I were up. After he came home I discovered he had found a LOT of cheap produce-- so we got to work, all together, and canned (jarred :)) six jars of pears, three jars of apricots, three jars of blackberry-strawberry jam, and three jars of strawberry jam. It was a lot of work, but worth it!

Next on the to-do list is applesauce and hot pepper jelly and (I want) pickles. I'm tempted to try some carrots as bread and butter pickles. Something tells me that would be really yummy.

I have lists and lists of stuff I want to preserve. I need a pressure canner to do all I want to, but I can deal without for now :).

It does make me really aware of gardening and seasons. My oldest brother gave me an incredible month-by-month LOCAL garden book for Christmas and I have been making lists of what to put into the garden... why? Because the next time I should start planting is in AUGUST when my baby is due!

We had our ultrasound appointment for Kasen on thursday and he's doing very well. He weighed in at an estimates 2 lbs 14 oz and was 61st percentile on size-- really big for my babies! He's strong and healthy, and already has masses of long hair that we saw floating along in the ultrasound. He's truly beautiful and already looks like my other boys.

Kev suggested that we consider 'Kay-ven' as an alternative name... you know, Kevin with an 'A'? He also suggested that Kevin is a great name and we could reuse it.

Kev is reading really well these days. He can sound out just about anything and spends his 'coloring' time copying pages out of books. Today it was from the 'Joy of Cooking' "Protect the fingers as you hand-grate". He asked me what it meant :).

Today's dinner is chili (from scratch with dried Kids-beans (kidney-beans)) and I just whipped up some goat-milk ice cream (milk, sugar, vanilla, little salt) in my new ice-cream maker (it is SELF REFRIDGERATED!) Very yummy :). I'm supposed to go later tonight to get some more canning jars, pickling salt, and look at some herb plants, etc.

After our white chickens escaped and dug up half of our flowers I had to clip their wings. Keith was shocked at how humane it was (did he think I was going to cut the WINGS? It's just the flight feathers!) One of the pullets glared at me the whole time and another one grabbed the scissors and ran off with them with my boys shrieking in hilarity.