November 2014 – Andelin Adventures

Jeremy’s 9th Birthday

Jeremy turned NINE today! For the past month or more he has been asking to go to Chuck a Rama, because a new location opened up pretty close to us in Lehi. Since it’s brand new, it has always been busy and we kept saying that we would wait awhile before checking it out. Well a couple of weeks ago he asked if we could go for his birthday, so we said we would. Then this past week, the Christmas catalogs were discovered by the kids, and Jeremy found something that he actually asked for. He usually doesn’t ask for anything, it’s very rare for him to make any indication of something that he is interested in. He is quite different from Ethan. When Ethan is interested in something he is OBSESSED with it and makes sure you know exactly what he likes and wants. So for Jeremy to request something from the catalog for his birthday, was kind of a big deal.

We started out the day with taking the kids to a workshop at Home Depot. They got to make “give and save banks”, basically a bank with two sides, one for giving and one for saving. Then we headed over to Toys R Us to pick up the item that Jeremy requested from the catalog. It was a Pokemon building block set. Then we ran a couple of other errands, before heading over to Chuck a Rama for a late lunch/early dinner. We were there for nearly two hours, and by the time everyone was finally done Jeremy declared that he was “so full”. I said that’s good, because since we weren’t home today I wasn’t able to make him a cake. He told me that that was ok. He’s a pretty laid back kid. Also, since we went to the toy store today, to get the thing he wanted, it wasn’t wrapped so there weren’t any presents to open tonight either. So we came home, the kids got ready for bed, and Jeremy sat at the table to play with his new Pokemon building blocks.

Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving!

After serving breakfast this morning I got started on making pies, because that is what Granny wanted us to bring to her house tonight. I started with an apple pie with a crumble topping, then I moved on to a pumpkin cheesecake, finally I made a pecan pie. Of course I didn’t make them one at a time, I had parts of them going simultaneously, all while working on cleaning up in the kitchen and dealing with kids constantly underfoot and all the other craziness that a family of this size brings. Somewhere along the course of the morning I forgot to add the eggs to the pecan pie, so when it came out of the oven it was just candied pecans in a crust. Needless to say, that pie did not go to Granny’s. I also made some rolls.

I decided that we should get out the box that Grandpa had sent before going to Granny’s since I knew we would probably be at Granny’s house until late. The kids were all interested in what was in the box, and I think a couple of them figured it out right before I opened it up. 😉 Grandpa sent See’s chocolate turkeys!

We went to Granny’s in the early afternoon. We got there before cousins did, and some of the kids watched the Macy’s thanksgiving parade on the TV, since that’s what Granny had been watching when we arrived. When cousins arrived, they heated up their bowl of mashed potatoes in the microwave, and Granny pulled out the turkey, which ended up not being done. She had no idea why it wasn’t done, and she was very upset about it. We decided to pick off what meat looked done and put the bird back in the oven. After dinner though the evening went downhill fast. Lydia got into Granny’s makeup. She didn’t use the lipstick to color on the walls or counter or anything like that, but she had it all over her face. It also looked like she had the lipsticks kiss, because some of them had some of the other colors on them like they had been touched together. Adam and Lydia both got into a bunch of pills that Granny had sitting on the counter. I don’t really like going over there because this stuff is always out where the kids can get to it, and pills in the reach of the kids is just NOT SAFE. I don’t like feeling like my kids aren’t safe because we are at Granny’s house. Then later Granny started insisting that she smelled nail polish and immediately blaming Lydia for it. I went to look for Lydia and found her playing quietly in the toy room for once, which seemed to be missing a LOT of toys. There used to be lots of toys in there, and I have no idea where they went, but I suspect that the lack of toys is the reason that the little ones were getting into all kinds of other things.

At one point during the evening we heard reports of Dinah whacking people with the fluff from her coat, and there were other reports of kids being mean to each other as well.

Eventually we gave up on hoping that the kids would stay out of trouble and therefore out of danger and so we had to just leave. I felt like with the amount of trouble they had gotten into, we had stayed WAY too long.

Early Thanksgiving Feast

While I was down the hall this morning, and the kids were about the house doing their own thing, Adam and Lydia got bored and decided that they would decorate the living room with Jango’s dog food.

I asked the bigger kids to help clean it up, which they all refused to do, so I declared it nap time. I couldn’t have them playing out in the living room with it looking like that! So sending them to take naps got them out of the way so the mess could be taken care of. Meanwhile, Chewy and the cat thought this was a great feast for them. Fitting since tomorrow is Thanksgiving….

After the bulk of the kids fell asleep I got Ethan and Jeremy out here to help clean it up, of course they spent most of the time goofing off and sometimes dropping the food before it made it back into the container.

Experiments in Canning

We were shopping at Sam’s club a while ago and found that they had persimmons on sale for a really good deal. I also picked up a 3 pound bag of cranberries. I initially picked up one bag, and as we were eating those persimmons I had the thought, to try to can them. So I sent Kyle back for some more. I also got a couple of 3 pound bags of cranberries. I started by making some cranberry jam, and some spiced cranberry jam. I really can’t tell any difference between cranberry jam, and cranberry sauce though.

Then I made some persimmon jam. The recipe I found online called for a lot of lemon juice and as soon as I poured it in the whole pot smelled like lemon. I think if I every try to make persimmon jam again, I will reduce the lemon juice slightly to hopefully get more of the persimmon flavor.

My last experiment was to can persimmon slices. This experiment failed, big time. During the canning process the persimmons created this think slime in the jar. When we opened a jar and tasted them, they just tasted like they had gone bad. 🙁

Apples

I have FINALLY finished canning apples for this season! We went to pick apples at my co-leader’s house a couple of times. We picked apples at Granny’s house, and Aunt Linda and Uncle Aaron brought us a box of apples just as I thought I was nearing the finish line. I am glad they brought them though because they were nice enough to make apple rings from and I wouldn’t have been able to make any apple rings otherwise.

I made 50 quarts of applesauce (18 quarts of peach, 9 quarts of blueberry, 10 quarts of cherry, 9 quarts of unsweetened, and 4 quarts of red hot), 22 quarts of pie filling, 12 quarts of apple rings (9 quarts cinnamon, 3 quarts mint), 12 pints syrup (6 pints apple pie, and 6 quarts cinnamon), and 28 half pints of jam (7 jars of apple pie, 7 jars of candy apple, 7 jars of apple cider, and 7 jars of mint).