When it rains it pours!

As many of you know Todd lost his decent paying job and so I am now desperately looking for work. I finally got an interview on Friday, but on Thursday (last week) I bent over to pick up a toy and threw my back out. I had to scream for Todd to come help me. He basically had to carry me to bed. I went to the interview on Friday, on some pretty heavy medication, needless to say I did not hear back.
I have been in the most excruciating pain I have ever had. This is worse than broken tailbones, surgeries or even childbirth. It hurts to lay down it hurts to sit, hurts to stand and hurts to walk. It was finally letting up last Monday, then I reached for a diet coke, and again had to scream for Todd to help straighten me up and get me into bed.
So I have been trying to nurse my back back into working order, and trying to find work. Freaking out about how I am going to find work let alone work with my back this way, and how is my back going to get better if I can't see a doctor because I don't have money to pay for that let alone any of our other bills!

Anyone wanna buy a boat?

Apple Heaven

Don't these look scrumpsious?!


Todd made the best apple pie!


Jamie dried some apples in her fancy food dehydrator.


I dried 3 times as many apples in Russ's homemade food dehydrator.

Then I made some yummy Apple Jelly. Here's how:

First wash the apples


Then cut them in quarters


Juice them (Russ has a juicer so I just used his, if you don't have a juicer then put the quarters in a large pot, add ten cups water and cook them. Once cooked strain the juice through cheesecloth. I used Sure Jell pectin so I needed 7 cups of juice)
I put the apple quarters in the juicer, filled it halfway then sprinkled on some apple pie spice filled it the rest of the way and sprinkled on some more spices. I thought this would give an extra yummy to the jelly.



I didn't take pictures of the next step because I had to do it quickly and according to the directions "exact."
I sent Todd to the store for the pectin and asked him to get the no sugar one, needless to say he got the one that you have to use sugar. But hey, he found the pectin. So whatever type of pectin you get just follow the directions exactly as they say.

Here is the finished product.




Note* If you don't have a generous uncle with an apple orchard I think it would be more cost effective to make the jelly out of apple juice you buy at the store.

A is for Apple

Last year Michael and Todd went with Grandma and Grandpa out to Karls apple orchard to pick apples. He grows the most delicious gala and fuji apples I have ever had! I thought that would be fun for us to do again this year so we got permission from Karl, who so kindly let us come and pick some apples. Thanks Karl


We tried to teach them to twist then pull to preserve the twigg for next years crop.


They weren't really interested in picking apples, but they loved running up and down the row of trees!


Look at all the apples we got! On the way home we thought of all the things we would make with them.

Cousins

Michael absolutely loves having his cousin Genesee here with us! They have had so much fun together. Here are some pictures of the fun things they have been up to.

Michael and Genesee somehow got Grandpa to jump on the tramp with them, or as Michael would say "Grandpa fump."


Every year the neighbors sell discount pumpkins in their driveway. So we walked over and bought some pumpkins to carve. Michael loves their dog Bandit.

They love playing together in the backyard. Todd rigged up a wagon to the back of Michaels truck so that he could pull her instead of run over her.

This is my favorite, laying on my bed, watching a movie, settling down for the night.

Thankful Thursday. . . a little early

I am having a really rough day so I am making a thankful list a couple days early in hopes that I will feel better about life.

1. I am thankful for our health
2. I am thankful for vacuum cleaners
3. I am thankful for comfortable clothes
4. I am thankful for DVD players and DVDs like Finding Nemo
5. I am thankful for indoor plumbing

Wow that took me 20 minutes to come up with that list!