Our Spaghetti Sauce!!!

Doug and I decided that it would be fun to put our HUNDREDS of tomatoes to good use so we made our own spaghetti sauce and canned it! It was so much fun, we were up until 1:00 in the morning doing it, and we took pictures to document the process! It was not the most cost effective thing to do, but we loved doing it together!



First step it to peel the skin off the tomatoes and then squish them with your hands to get the seeds and water out. Then we diced all of the other ingredients that went into the sauce.



This is a picture of the spices and yummy veggies we added.

Then we combined the tomatoes with the spices and let it simmer for about an hour!

Then we went through the canning process. Our friend let us borrow her pressure canner and it is really fun to use. This was the end result! Doesn't that look yummy?

Conversation with Benson

This is the conversation Benson and I had the other morning.

Mom: Benson what do you want to be when you grow up?

Benson: I really think I want to be a dad.

Mom: Well, how many kids do yo want to have.

Benson: I am going to have one hundred kids!! (thinking for a minute)... And I think that I will have to drive a bus to drive all my kids around!

Mom: WOW! That is a lot of kids are you sure you want one hundred kids

Benson: (Thinking again)... Well, maybe I will just have four kids, then I don't have to drive a bus!

Another masterpiece

Here is another one of Brielle's GREAT masterpieces. It is called "the little lamb." She is going to make it someday!

Adilynn 4 months

It seems a little strange to put a post about Adilynn at four months when she is just a few days away from being five months old, but oh well. She is our little princess. I seriously count my blessings every day because I have her. She is truly a wonderful baby. She eats great, she sleeps through the night, she is generally happy during the day (except for the few ear infections), and the whole family just dotes on her all the time. We love this baby girl! Here are a few pictures!

This is the face that I get to wake up to every morning!

Adilynn's first time eating baby food! She LOVES to eat!

Faces of Summer

Playing at parks
Eating ice cream
And playing so hard you just fall asleep during lunch

We love summer!

To mothers everywhere!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbYLKVgwztY&feature=player_embedded

Thanks Alice for this link. This is an amazing message!

Warriors Path and Bays Mountain

This past Memorial Day we decided to take advantage of some much needed family time! We headed up north to visit Warriors path State park and Bays Mountain State park. It was a fabulous day together.

Warriors path is next to a beautiful lake and has a HUGE playground for kids. It is an awesome place. There was a tree house lookout, tons of playground equipment, a Narnia trail where you can follow the story of the Chronicles of Narnia, and endless fun The AMAZING Playground
A boat ride! (It was harder to push than you would think)

Look at those smiles!
This is part o the Narnia Trail, the white stag above and Mr, Tumnus below
The Beavers house
Mr. Tumnus's house
Brielle made a new friend at the park (which is not surprising, she makes friends wherever she goes!
The "monkey" on the monkey bars!
These two are best buddies!
My sweet little babe!


Bays mountain is so neat, if anyone is around the area, it is so worth the hour and a half drive! It has a bunch of different animal habitats where we got to see gray wolves, owls, bobcats, birds of prey and deer in there natural habitat. The wolves were the BEST! I have never seen wolves so up close and personal before. The park also has a big Planetarium. It had an amazing show, and I think it was the kids favorite part!

I love this picture, I think it is so sweet!
The BOBCAT
THE DEER
THE OWLS
THE GRAY WOLVES

THE TURTLES

LILY PAD COVE

BEAUTIFUL!!

The whole day was perfect, and the trip only cost 25.00 including buying lunch! I would do all of it again tomorrow!

Summer has started!

Some of the joys of summer are getting wet and planting a garden! We love summer time! Our garden,(thanks to the hours of work by my sweet hubby), has already produced 9 big, beautiful, delicious broccoli heads! MMM! Bring on the freshness.



And don't mind the size of the pool, they still have fun!

The Last Day

I remember the last day of school. The excitement for summer, the close of another school year, and the opportunity to move on to another grade where you are older and a little smarter. The last day of school was always a celebration, but now that I am a mom the last day of school makes me a little sad. It is hard to see our kids grow up. It is hard for me to think that this child will never experience Kindergarten again, and before I know it, she will be graduating high school and I will wonder where all that time went. But for now I am going to remember to hug her tighter every day because she will be older tomorrow.

And I am going to try hard not to cry.



PS Brielle recieved the Good Citizenship award at school. They award it to kids that are helpful and nice to others. We are so proud of her!

Is it Genetic?

This is so funny that I had to post it. When Parker was about 3 months old he used to suck on his two middle fingers that were webbed together. We always thought it was so funny. Then the other day I went in to check on Adilynn and caught her sucking on the very same two fingers! Mind you these are the SAME two fingers Doug sucked on when he was a baby. Is that something you could consider genetic??

Parker about 3 months old (look at that hair!!!)

Adilynn almost 3 months old (I couldn't get the picture to rotate)

He is getting old!

By old I don't mean boring, my hubby is getting up there! On Tuesday we celebrated Doug's 32nd birthday. We had a few days of celebration. On Friday night we went out with some friends to PF Chang's! It was so fun and of course the food was fantastic. Our friends gave Doug some pretty great "gag" gifts, one of which were some really really really short shorts with the Jazz logo printed on them. If you know Doug he loves the Jazz basketball team and these shorts could have been their uniforms about 30 years ago! The other gift was a huge clock with a chain on it to wear around your neck. His basketball nickname is "Prime time", so the clock was perfect. We also had a really funny experience at dinner. There was this guy a few tables over that saw us taking pictures and came over to take a picture of all of us together. Now this guy must have been a little TIPSY because after the picture he yelled, and I mean really loud, to the whole restaurant that it was Doug's birthday! He then led the whole restaurant full of strangers in singing Happy Birthday to Doug! It was soooo funny! Doug hates that type of stuff and even said to me before we left for dinner that he was glad we were going to PF Chang's because they don't sing to you! HA HA HA HA HA!

The kids and I decided to give Doug a wheelbarrow for his birthday. I know it doesn't sound too exciting but he loved it! On his actual birthday I made him a yummy dinner with his favorite strawberry pie for dessert, and then he spent the night mowing the lawn. Not too exciting, but overall he said it was a great birthday.

I love Doug so much. There is no one in the world more perfect for me than he is. I am so grateful for him and for all the hard work he puts in for our family. he is the best husband and dad in the world. Thanks Doug for just being you! Happy Birthday!


This is like the wheelbarrow we bought for Doug, but of course his is Tennessee orange!

This is the picture the "TIPSY" guy took of us!

The guys: Doug, Pierce and Jarom