Preparing for higher education in the school above.
We managed to can over 100 quarts and to freeze about 50 quarts. We will be enjoying lots of peaches this winter, especially peach smoothies from the frozen ones. Yummy! Can’t wait!
We like our set up pretty well, we keep all the mess outside.
I consider canning to be a very educational experience and it does well to teach everybody to work as a team, but I never count it as “school” because it doesn’t get the algebra done.
Now off to can pears or do algebra.
We got a new appliance at our house this year, and we have been having lots of fun. We held off for a long time on one of these, because we are vegetarian, and we weren’t sure that we’d really use it as vegetarians, but we were wrong. The kids and the dad, especially love using it. And the grilled vegetables taste absolutely amazing. Our favorite foods to grill are green beans, tomatoes, zucchini, tofu, apples, and marinated portobello mushrooms. Oh my, my mouth is watering right now. Anyway, if you come over to our place this summer, we’ll grill you up some veges, so hurry over.
Zippy is the one who came up with grilling fruit. We’ve tried pineapple, apples and strawberries. All are quite tasty, but I have to admit the grilled apples are the ones that steal the day, in my opinion. Yum, yum!
One of my goals, as a homeschool mom, is to help my children have opportunities to bless others. I also want opportunities for myself like that. I, personally, think that I bless people every day in my home and that that is my primary mission field right now, but I also find myself incredibly blessed when we as a family can bless others.
Recently, we completed a five-week long series of meetings at our church. My daughter was very involved in the greeting and registration as she loves socializing and making new friends whether they be 2 or 92. My oldest son helped me in leading out in meetings for children that ran simultaneous to the adult meetings.
We had eighteen kids on our highest evening, with a total of total of twenty-three kids that attended over the course of the meeting. I’m not sure what our average was, but it seemed like it was between ten and twelve.
We chose to use the Janice’s Attic video series and focus on developing character traits for the theme in the children’s meetings.
(You’ll have to excuse the dark pictures. The kids decided they liked watching the video with the lights out best.)
We had lots of fun with crafts. Kids love crafts. (I get tired of them, but that’s a secret!) For sure the favorite craft of all was when we made peanut butter cookies together. I wasn’t sure if I was losing my mind to take that one on. It just so happened to be the night that we had eighteen kids. But it went rather smoothly, and we didn’t even have cookie batter on the walls or floor. Yeah!
We had one experience during these meetings that reminded us that this is indeed a worthwhile activity. We had a boy that was only able to make it half a dozen times or so. On his second night, he held out a little trinket to me and said, “Can I show you something special?” Of course, I paused and looked. Then he proceeded, “This is special because my dad gave this to me right before he died. He bought it in China.” Wow! What a sad lot that boy had. As I got to know the family more, I found that was only one of their troubles. I wasn’t sure which children shared a dad with him. There were four that were coming from that particular family. The were kind of homeless. The kids spent the week days in foster care and then the weekends with their mom. Their mom had just got out of drug rehab and desperately wants to get a job and provide for her children. She only has one skill—selling drugs. Nobody wants to hire her. We are still trying to help this family out. Please pray for them. Every child deserves to grow up in a good situation, even though so few children get to.
We finished our first canning project–pickled cucumbers. I’m very thrilled because I have such good helpers. Zippy canned half the jars all by herself.
I sure think they look pretty. Don’t you?