I think Jessie has brain-washed the rest of my kids!

After we dropped Abbie off at kindergarten Spencer and I were eating lunch, and I asked him, “What should we do for Abbie’s birthday?”  He thought a moment, smiled and replied, “We could get her some junk.”

When we’re helping we’re happy!

Last Saturday after breakfast I looked out the kitchen window and Mark and Jessie were happily picking up the apples that had fallen off the trees.  I asked Ken if he a bribed them with a treat if they helped.  He laughed and said “Yeah, I told them they could help can the tomatoes.”

So after the apples were all cleaned up we had kitchen full of happy helpers – Spencer’s there too but he jumped off the chair by Abbie right before I took the picture so you can only see a few of his hairs at the bottom of the picture.  (Jessie joined in later after a little coaxing.)

So here’s the process:

1.  Abbie puts the tomatoes in the boiling water. 2. Mark takes them out and puts them in the cold water in the sink.

3.  Spencer slips some of the skins and gives them to Daddy to finish and core. 4.  Here comes Jessie, she measured the salt and lemon juice. 5.  And, just a little bit grossed out by the texture, squished the tomatoes into the jars.She got over the texture thing pretty quick because when Mark offered to trade her jobs she turned him down.

We were so excited to be done with a canning session before lunch.  It usually seems that we finish around midnight. Ken asked what we should do next and, at my suggestion, he ended up digging out the rose bush and the little pine bush by the front door.  I went out to help and ended up just being a cheerleader because we only have one shovel, one pair of work gloves and Ken has all the muscles.We replanted some of the flowers from the front flower bed that were in the shade and needed full sun instead and I think only one of them isn’t going to with stand the travels.  Here’s to home improvement!

Family Pictures

Here are a few of the edited pictures I’ve been working on for my family.  I found a totally awesome new place to play with photos online from the DailyDigi.  You should totally check it out if you like to play with pictures.  I got my matte and frame from them.  It’s http://www.picnik.com.

Unfortunately I’m still learning at about taking photos – wait, that should be fortunately I’m still learning lots.  But unfortunately the pose for this picture didn’t quite crop to an 8x10 to begin with and after I edited it (which took days so I’m not redoing it) not even to a 5x7.  So I’ve been playing and these are the two pictures I came up with.  The top one is the 5x7 and the one below is the 8x10.

Dinos for lunch

One day last week to make lunch a little more special I decided to use a dinosaur sandwich cutter that my sister got for Spencer last Christmas.  Now in order for this to work I need two kids who want the same sandwich.  And Abbie and Spencer both agreed on peanut butter and jam.  The only little glitch to this story is that I overlooked the fact that Abbie will not eat crunchy peanut butter.

After I took this picture Abbie said, “I didn’t want you to get a picture of my sad face.”Not wanting her day to be ruined over a few chunks of peanuts I offered to make her another sandwich, but I also had to inform her that I couldn’t cut it into a dinosaur.  She was ok with that, and so I made another sandwich with smooth peanut butter.

Then a brilliant idea struck me and it totally made her day too.  I just got out my tiny metal heart cookie cutter and cut out two hearts from her half sandwich.  Yeah!!! for inspiration! Here are two other pictures of Abbie that day.  One with her cute hair and one with her magnetix “work of art” for the day. Well that’s all for today folks.  I think my side of the bed is missing me.