September 2008 – Andelin Adventures

Out on a Limb

We went over to my mother’s house to finish raiding the peach tree and get as many apples off of her apple tree as possible. Since the Apple tree was so large (the tops were more than two stories up) and the branches were so scattered with twigs, it was difficult to get the ladder close to the main branches, so I spent most of my time bracing the ladder whilst Rebecca climbed it to get as many apples as she could reach. After clearing those apples out, she decided brave the tree and step off the ladder to reach those other groups of apples. Once we have pictures posted, I’ll be sure to add some of them. Pictures are now up! 🙂

She plans on making different jam and pie filling out of these apples, which sounds exciting!

Canning Peaches

I just love canning fruits (I’ve never done veggies) it’s so much fun. I love the sight of the boxes of fruit sitting there waiting to be turned into something yummy. I love feeling like I am making the fruit useable for all year long rather than eat it now or it goes bad. My two favorite parts of canning, are waiting for the jars to ‘pop’ indicating that they have sealed and standing back and seeing the fruits of my labors…..

Isn’t that just the most beautiful sight you’ve ever seen? 🙂 Peach pie filling, spiced peaches (which the kids call “Christmas peaches”), spiced peach syrup (yummy on pancakes), and spiced peach jam. Yummy.

Dinah cut her 4th tooth

Dinah has cut her fourth tooth. You still can’t see it very well yet, but you can feel it, if you put your finger in her mouth 😉

Ethan’s first day riding his bike to school

Ethan has been seeing his friends Jacob and Brayden occasionally riding their bikes to school and yesterday he decided he wanted to do the same. He didn’t have a helmet and we were running late so I said “not today, but maybe tomorrow.” Well after Dinah’s check-up yesterday, we went to Target and they happened to have some nice looking inexpensive helmets, so we got one for Ethan, one for Tyra and even Jeremy got one. So this morning Ethan was very excited and ready to go to school early, and I got the bike out of the garage, so he could ride to school. He rode all the way to school quite successfully, with me reminding him that when his foot gets to the top it’s time for him to push down with that foot. He did really well and when it came time to pick him up from school he rode all the way home, only falling off once. Thanks to Grandpa and Grandma he has a bike with training wheels, otherwise he would have fallen off a lot more than that 😉

Peaches, Peaches and more Peaches

We went tonight to Karen’s house to pick peaches. I am so excited that this year they are SMALL! YAY! That means I get to make spiced peaches this year, yummy. The kids LOVE going to pick fruit. They constantly pick up fruits and eat them (they usually eat the whole fruit), and it’s healthy so who can complain? We got a bunch of peaches and and some apples, and we got some yummy red grapes from the apple tree! Actually the grape vine crawled it’s way up the apple tree and produced it’s best grapes at the very top. I just couldn’t leave those yummy grapes there, so we found a ladder and Kyle helped support it so we wouldn’t break the tree and so I wouldn’t fall and I climbed up there and used some shears to cut those bunches of grapes out of there.