"For he will not dwell unduly on the days of his life, because God keeps [him] busy with the joy of his heart."
Ecclesiastes 5:20
Well, like normal, we've been busy! We didn't really do one "big" thing last week that was worthy of its own blog post, so this is a recap of many of the little things we've been doing! :)
Two Saturday's ago we went and picked a huge wheelbarrow full of corn from our neighbor's field. Mr. Townsend (our neighbor) had come by a few days before and said we could go pick from his corn (we have the greatest neighbors...ever). We brought back lots and lots of ears! :) We shucked, de-haired, boiled and cut the corn off the cob. Finally we put them in many Ziploc baggies and froze them! We had 2 paper bags full of corn after putting up around 25 quart bags. Since we couldn't eat that much corn we then canned another 7 quarts of corn! We just finished our last corn dinner last night! :) [We'll be harvesting more corn soon, but this time it will be from our own garden. :)]
Yummy corn!
So, because we had so much corn, Judah chewed on his first corn cob last week! :)
Since I documented Lydia's first corn cob taste, I thought I should document Judah's as well! :)
He seemed to enjoy the corn cob...Judah is never one to reject food! ;)
Because I already had the camera out, I took a quick photo of Hannah's wonderful Chinese dinner:
If you haven't had homemade Chinese, you are missing out! In my opinion, it's SO much better than the stuff you get from the restaurants (it's also MUCH healthier!!).
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Grandpa and Grandma gave us their old pool and we have really been enjoying it! The pool required a bunch of intense thought as to how it should be constructed, but Daddy's hard work paid off! It's been really nice to hop in our pool instead of driving over to our neighbor's...it's a quick and wonderful way of cooling off in this heat! :)
Lydia and Weedels in the pool!
Alexis, Caleb, Seth, Eden, Josiah, and Lydia swim in the pool most. The rest of us just get in every now and then! :)
Eden, Lydia, and Josiah...they are almost inseparable. They have the most fights together, but they're also the ones who play together the most! :)
The swimming bunch!
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Our greenbeans have been producing abundantly this year! We picked our second round of greenbeans this past Thursday and it took about 3 hours with 5 of us picking. That should give you an idea of how many plants we have! :) Lots of plants mean lots more yield (normally) but it also means more work. We normally go for lots of plants because we've got enough workers to make it a little bit less "work." :-D
Nevertheless, picking greenbeans isn't the most fun job anyone could ask for...but we get it done! After we pick them, we snap the ends off and then snap the greenbean in half (if it's big enough).
Here's a photo of the all the greenbeans from one picking:
We picked all these greenbeans last Thursday and snapped them all Friday morning.
It takes about 2 hours to snap them all, so we normally listen to a Jonathan Park or music C.D.
Hannah getting ready to "snap"! :)
Lexi working it!
Seth rocked Judah for a little bit and then he came and joined the snappin' party! :)
The Yellow Snapper Team!
After a hour or two of snapping greenbeans, this was our yield:
One basket full and one box full! :)
Friday afternoon, Lexi's friend, Jaime, came over and we then canned 14 quarts of greenbeans. Later Mama (with varied help) canned another 3 batches making a total of 35 quarts from one crop of greenbeans!!
Counting both times we have picked green beans, we have canned a total of 56 jars full of greenbeans! :) And more is yet to come. :)
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While we are on the topic of gardening, we'll talk about our potatoes! Daddy, Lexi, and her friend, Jaime, unearthed the majority of our potatoes last Saturday.
Here's our bounty!
We still have one little garden of potatoes left...we'll get to those sometime. :) Since we have so many potatoes we've been eating them at least once a day (or so it seems!). We've had mashed potatoes, mashed potato casserole, potato "pancakes", fried potatoes, etc. Yesterday we washed and chopped up some of the little potatoes. This morning Mama canned 14 quarts of potatoes for this winter! Meanwhile our laundry room has baskets of potatoes all over the floor! :) [I can't end without a declaration of praise to Jesus for keeping the voles away from our potatoes...this year's crop is so much better than last year's!]
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Judah is getting so big!
I love his deep, blue eyes...especially when he's drinking tea (or coconut milk) from his bottle. He lays back in your arms and just stares at you, flapping his long eyelashes. It's the sweetest thing ever!
He's such a happy baby (most of the time!) He loves saying "Da da" and I know it warms Daddy's heart when he comes home; Judah will be in our arms, reaching out for Daddy while saying "Da da" and looking into Daddy's face.
He's starting to figure out the stairs (right photo) but we've been teaching him no so we've haven't had much trouble with that! :)
On the crawl!
Judah is getting good at crawling and is quite a mobile little guy. He loves to climb over anything and it's hard to find something that he can't crawl over! :)
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We did something we have never done before: made butter! It took about an hour of rolling a half-gallon jar of cream on the floor to get butter. I personally thought the butter would never come but it did!
Once the butter globules were nice and big we poured off the buttermilk and then washed the butter (weird, I know).
Butter in progress!
This was the end result:
A butter ball!
The picture doesn't do justice to just how yellow our butter was. It almost looked like the inside of an egg yolk!
Speaking of milk and butter, we're getting real close to getting a cow! We found a great one on Craigslist and are going to see it tonight. If we like it, and everything works out, we will most likely have a cow within 2 months!!!!!!!!!! (I'm more excited about what could come after the cow...a HORSE!!! :)
Daddy's going to build a shed for our prospective animals soon and then all we need are the animals! It's so exciting!
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I'm not sure if I made it public on this blog, but I got a rose plant from a friend at church a few months ago. It is a Climbing America rose and I love it so much! Currently there are about 8 flowers on it and many more blooms!
Aren't they gorgeous?! I love roses...maybe one day I'll have a HUGE rose garden. I'd like to have some hydrangeas too, but we'll see. :)
So there's the update on the little stuff we've been doing. People always ask what I've been doing and I always say "not much." Everything we do doesn't enter my mind as "out of the norm" so I just think it's part of everyday life. Thus it may sound like we have an extremely boring life, but that is far from true! Life here is always interesting and always changing!
Hopefully the next time I update it'll be on the cow?!!
We'll see!
Til then, have a great day!
Kimber :)
