Crazy Canners

Mark and I have gone crazy with the canning this year. Who knew we had it in us? Last year Mark and I planted a small garden and canned a few things of salsa. We also had a few apples from our apple tree so we canned just a few pints of applesauce. Feeling confident with our success we planted an even bigger garden this year. And thanks to the same ribbon technique that worked on our strawberries, our apples went crazy. We only threw away about 10 apples because of birds, where as last year we threw away more than half of what we picked. Problem is we had more apples than we knew what to do with. We canned 22 pints of applesauce, 6 quarts of cinnamon apples, and did 3 rounds of dried apples and still had more. So we made three lonely quarts of apple juice. The applesauce and apple juice turned out pink which Clara was delighted with. We also canned 11 quarts of pears (thanks to my cousin Michael's tree), 17 pints of salsa, 9 pints of spaghetti sauce, several jars of apricot jam (thanks to my sister's tree) and 11 quarts of grape juice (thanks to my mother in law's grapes). I know, we're crazy canners.
The pink applesauce


The grape juice, all different colors because of several different kinds of grapes.


The apple juice.

Collin loved eating the first batch of dried apples. He ate probably one of these trays by himself the first day. That's like 8 apples. Not a fun diaper to change the next day.

Horse riding lessons

So now that Homecoming is finally over I can post some things I've been saving up. Clara, don't ask me how, has talked us into letting her take horse riding lessons. She didn't want to take dance again this year but really, really wanted to take riding lessons. Let me tell you, it's not cheap. We told her she could only take them until Christmas because that's about as expensive as a whole year of dance. We'll see how it goes from there. Her horse is named Flame and she's doing really well. Although she gets distracted really easily and the horse starts to wander off. But she has fun.

The Next Miley Cyrus? I doubt it.

Clara has really been into singing lately. She likes to sing...a lot...and usually songs she doesn't really know. She thinks she knows the Miley Cyrus songs but she's never seen the show and we've never listened to the music. She also likes to make up songs. Mark and I have a hard time not laughing because she tries to sound really serious and slides into all the notes and doesn't say the ends of words. I guess that's how music sounds to her.
So today she was working on a school project. She had to read about somewhere in the world and then do a project on it. She chose a book about Hawaii and then drew a poster of a volcano. As she was coloring she was singing a made up song about a volcano. She sang it a couple of times so I tried to write down as much of it as I could. It went something like this:

There's a volcano, yeah...There's a volcano, yeah
It's gonna blow, It's gonna blow
Hot lava streaming down
Hot lava in our town

Trees on fire, Trees on fire
It's everywhere, It's everywhere
We don't want that in our town
It will make us die
It will make us cry

Cause we don't want a volcano in our town
We don't want a volcano around

(This next part sung in a very hard rock yelling kind of way)

It's gonna blow!
It's gonna blow!

No more volcano
Maybe we should move around...ooh, ooh, ooh
Because we don't want to die.



I've got to hand it to her that she's pretty good at rhyming lyrics. But it's just so funny to hear her sing. Right now she's singing a song about rain as she's bathing. It's sounds suspiciously like the volcano song.

Some funny Claraisms

When I was Clara's age, computers were just becoming main stream. We had a set of about 20 in our school library and we would get to use them once a week to play the spelling games and Oregon Trail. But you can tell that Clara has grown up in a world of computers. And Tivo. She always wants to pause things or stop and rewind them. The other day on our way to church we passed Sister Lakey's house. She was released about a month ago from leading the music in Primary. Clara asked me very seriously "Why did they delete Sister Lakey from the primary?" If only being released from a calling were as easy as pushing the delete button on your computer.
I can also tell Clara has been hanging out with her older cousins and has been picking up a few phrases. Nothing bad, but today she told me that Connor, her cousin, was cracking her out. I don't think she really knows what she is saying.
My current favorite phrase of Clara's is when she says until a long time. Like we haven't been to McDonalds until a long time. Or We haven't seen her until a long time. So funny.

The not so Ewok Village

So do you remember how I Mark wanted to build an Ewok Village around our big telephone poles and I gave him an ultimatum. He wanted to build a lot of octagon shaped levels with ladders and bridges and things but I told him that that is really cool in his head and also more exciting for a 10 year old boy. I have a 6 and a 1 year old who would just like some swings and a slide. So he finally finished the swingset portion. He actually finished it about a month ago or so but I just haven't gotten around to posting about it. The kids really love it. It's not exactly the Ewok village Mark had in mind but it's fun anyway.



On top of the platform with the slide he plans to put another level with a clubhouse. That will be next years project probably. He did get the floor put in for it though.
And then some more pictures just because my kids are so cute. Notice Collins hair. We can't get it to lay down. Everybody says to cut it really short so it doesn't stick up but I want to give it a chance at least. Dang Mark for passing on the sticky outy hair.

1st day of 1st grade

Clara started 1st grade this last Monday. I can't believe school started so early here. She is so excited to go all day though we have yet to go all day. The first graders go half day the first 2 weeks. We'll see if she is as excited after she actually does it. She was so excited to eat lunch there too. Her teachers name is Mrs. Jeppesen and she seems really nice. We didn't know anything about the teachers because she was in Grandview last year but they closed Grandview and redid the boundaries. She now goes to Westridge. She luckily got a few of the kids from her kindergarten class in her class so she at least knows a few people. But she is quick to make friends.

Missing in Action

We have been missing in action this last month due to trying to get in some fun summer trips before school starts. I have been putting off posting about it because I knew it would take me forever to get all the pictures downloaded. So you've been warned that there are a lot of pictures. At the end of July Clara, Collin, and I took a trip to California to visit Mark's brother and his wife. We always like spending time with them and they live near L.A. so there's a lot to do there. We worked it out that we could use our frequent flier miles to get us there. Not enough for Mark though. It was Clara's first time on a plane that she can remember (I think the last time was when she was about 3) so she was having fun. She like to look out the window and put her tray up and down and eat the little snacks they gave us. Collin wasn't so entertained by anything. He was mad to have to sit on my lap. We luckily had a extra seat on the way there so I could let him roam some. But I had to hold him on the takeoff and landing and he did not like that. I was holding him away from me and he was so squirmy, so I tried turning him towards me but that didn't help. He grabbed my cheeks and just pinched with all his strength. So I held his hands and he started headbutting me. Hard. I'm surprised I didn't get a bloody nose. Thank goodness our longest flight was an hour and a half. Anyway here are some pictures from that trip.



Clara on the plane.
We took a trip to the beach which is always fun. Clara had a blast. Thank goodness she is not afraid of sand anymore.

We even managed to bury her.

Collin love the sand too. Although it got in his diaper after a while and that was not so much fun.



We also went to Sea World. Not a fun day. We left my sister in law's house at about 9:30 knowing that it would take about 2.5 hours to get there. They have season passes so they have gone there several times this summer. About an hour outside SanDiego traffic came to a grinding halt. We sat there barely moving for about a half an hour before we called my brother in law to see if he could find out what the hold up was. Apparently there had been an accident a couple miles down the road he told us and that we should pass it soon. So the minutes ticked by without much progress. Finally after about 2 hours we pulled over and went to the bathroom and ate. We got back on the freeway and continued slowly. We finally heard on the radio that a tanker had rolled over that morning at 7:30 and they had been slowly cleaning up the debris. 12 miles and 4 hours later we got to Sea World. It took us almost 7 hours to get there....with 5 kids in the car. They were surprisingly good under the circumstances. But that only left us with about 6 hours at Sea World if we stayed until the park closed. Once we were there it was fun but we had to mad dash to everything and we didn't get to do much. It was disappointing. I didn't get a lot of pictures either because we only went to the shows mostly and I was holding Collin. So here are two.




We came home and then the next week Mark's parents and most of his brothers and families went to Yellowstone. We camped in West Yellowstone and then just took about 5 days to explore the park and surrounding areas. My boss says it wasn't really camping because we stayed in a KOA but I figure if I sleep in a tent, it's camping. We had a good time though.


Nayon, Zac, Clara and Ezra at one of the hot pools.


Old Faithful. Clara brought her camera and was frantically trying to take pictures of it.


Collin was fascinated by the wolves at the discovery center we went to. He kept reaching his hand in pointing to them and saying dog. He was so excited.


We saw some wildlife including these elk.

We went to the big falls. This was the day of matching shirts. We went out on a limb and ordered "family reunion" t-shirts. They had a Super O on them. Mark's entire family is obsessed with comic book figures so it was fitting. We did stand out a bit though. The kids loved wearing them. I'm not posting many pictures of Mark but in every picture we have he's wearing his ridiculous looking panama jack hat that he got in Puerto Rico. He thinks he looks cool....hmmm. Couldn't he just wear a baseball cap?

At the Upper Falls.
On the last day there we drove towards Jackson and took the ferry across at Jenny Lake and hiked to Hidden Falls. It was a fun hike but it rained towards the end so Collin was not happy in the backpack. Some lady passed us and asked annoyingly if we had something to cover him with. Honestly it wasn't raining that hard but I finally put a poncho over him. He screamed the rest of the way down so we just took it off and he was soaked by the end. We hiked a little further up passed the falls to Inspiration point and there was a moose a little off the trail. To see it we had to get way too close. It was about 20 feet away from us. So we snapped a picture and left.