Grandpa Sam's Birthday...

 

We had Grandpa and Grandma and my brother and his family over for chili, home made bread, apple crisp, and Aunt Christine's carrot cake. It was great!

 

Here he is with all of his grandchildren!

Wedding Bliss...

 Caleb and JoyAnn.  We went to their wedding yesterday.  I really wanted to stay home because we have been so busy but I am glad we went.  Another beautiful couple to find each other and bless us all with their joy!

If you have seen the movie Fireproof, you may recognize the cross in the background above.  They also had the salt and pepper shaker on top of the cake to symbolize together.  If you try to take one of the shakers off you will break the other.  Beautiful.

Courageous the Movie...

Wow!  This was a great movie!  Even greater to see it on the big screen.  If you get a chance, go to this movie.  Bring lots of tissue (especially if you are a woman), although I hear from some of my kids that they needed tissue too.  Sherwood Films did another excellent job!  Courageous the Movie  Check out the trailer.  The trailer is nothing compared to the actual scene.

 Our last day at Farmer's Market! (Unless they do a winter market and IF we do that. It's always nice when something so busy comes to an end for awhile.) We started out with the little card table, expanded to the two tables in the middle and last night grabbed the bench and wagon to put the squash on.  It was nice to have enough to sell.

 In my high tunnel, my tomatoes are doing great so it was a treat to be able to offer tomatoes.  Many people came for beets and cucumbers though and I only had one bunch of beets and no cucumbers.

 This year I had a good selection of peppers.  I raised Habanero and Cayenne as something a little different.  I discovered the trick to ripening those colored peppers.  Last Thursday, I picked peppers for the market and they hadn't turned all the way red or yellow or orange so they sat in the garage covered while we were gone camping.  When we came home, the peppers had turned all the way the color they were turning.  They were beautiful.  If I let them turn all the way on the plant, they will get a rotten spot somewhere and then I can't sell them anyway.  We still cut that part out and eat them.

 Last week squash really went well but this week I went home with most of it.

"The Bread Lady" hasn't been to market for 2 weeks so I decided to add whole wheat bread to our table.  I made 11 loaves on Wednesday and I only came home with 1 loaf! 

Hayride and Pie Contest...

Rebekah's Triple Berry Pie for the Pie Contest at the Cutler's annual hayride.  This was our 10th year of going!  It's always so much fun. 

 

Jordan's Apple Pie! 

 All the contestants.  Emily's is over here in the very right hand corner; a raspberry custard of some sort.

 

The winning pie was:  Jordan's apple pie.  She was surprised because apple is so plain and ordinary.  Rebekah got 2nd place and most all the pies were gone after the shared meal we had.  They were good.

Happy Birthday...

 Happy Birthday Kevin!  Here we are at nearly 10:30 p.m. having cake and ice cream.  We went out to Paradiso (you eat free on your birthday) to eat and did a bunch of errands and got home and had to have a celebration with the kids.  Chocolate zucchini cake with chocolate chip ice cream.   Mmmm!  Late night means late morning.  Thank God for the flexibility of home schooling.  The kids will still get the sleep they need and get their work done. 

This is the effort of the girls and I.  We got 58 jars of food canned yesterday.  On then end is tomato soup.  I had the tomatoes already made into sauce and just had to add the rest of the ingredients and heat it up and can it.  One of my favorite home canned "ready to eat" meals. Someone gave us about 40 pounds of beans. Our beans are not growing well and I sold the little we've had at market so I buy 10 pounds last week and get 7 quarts out of it.  Wow!  You cannot buy your produce to can for a family of our size.  It was $20 for 7 quarts.  While I was waiting for the canner to get done I made a batch of salsa to cook and Jordan canned it up while we were gone.  This doesn't happen very often so I had to take a picture of it.  I used to can as an event.  I had the kitchen perfect, counters cleaned, floors washed, jars all ready but now I can as a part of the day so I usually only do 1-2 canners at a time and wash jars as we need them.  This time the girls and I picked the ends off the beans and watched a different version of Jane Eyre.  It was not as good as the version we like so well.  We were glad we had watched the other one so our minds could fill in the blanks of what this shorter version missed.  We started snapping about 10:30 p.m. on Sunday night and Jordan said she was going to bed (we were up late to a niece's wedding on Saturday and up early Sunday), but as soon as she watched just 5 minutes she was hooked and said, "Oh, fine, I'll stay up."  She's like me, if you start watching it, no matter what, you have to finish it.