Can't we just stay home?

Seriously. I got the calendar out yesterday and I figured out that we have been out of town every other week since MAY! It has been crazy! Grandma's birthday party, Little Sahara Sand Dunes, Utah Summer Games, my weekend away with the girls and while I was gone, Allan took the boys to the beach in Cali, our trip to Idaho to go to St. Anthony's Sand Dunes and Yellowstone. We did all of that in less than 2 months. Needless to say, I'm not in any hurry to pack up the car and go anywhere else for a while!

HOWEVER!! I have really had the best time with Allan and the boys. I'm grateful that we are able to go on all these trips together, I love to spend time with them without having to worry about the everyday things. I love that I can just focus on having fun with them and all the rest can come later. It has been an great summer, I can't believe that school starts in 3 weeks! Summer went too fast this year.

In other news, I have been canning in between all this craziness! I have made apricot jam, canned apricots, and made salsa. I made 9 pints of salsa and I only have 4 left. Needless to say, I think I've finally found our salsa recipe! I have to be proud because there have been many failed attempts. Next comes the spaghetti sauce, lets hope I can get it right this year. I have either made awesome spaghetti sauce or it just sucks. No in between! So keep your fingers crossed for me. Most people think I'm crazy because I can my own stuff, but I truly enjoy doing it. Its relaxing for me. Weird, I know.

We have also discovered that Carson can swim! I had suspected that he could but it had been too cold to find out for sure. But he can touch in the shallow end now so we took off his life jacket and WHOO-HOO! The boy can swim! He is completely afraid of the deep end though. We'll see how long it takes for him to get over that fear. It didn't take Caleb very long...

Caleb is doing great. I really wish I could just take him to Never Never Land so he never has to get and older. I have really enjoyed age 9, I want to keep him this age forever! He bought himself a BB gun and he is so proud. He has been saving up for a few months and he finally earned enough money last week. The next thing on his agenda is a Ipod because I refuse to buy one for him. He is also playing indoor soccer this summer.

All in all, it has been a fun-filled, crazy at times, lots of driving, wonderful summer!

Canning stuff and a funny story...

A week ago, my friend Andrea called and asked if we wanted to go to her family orchard for FHE. She knew that I'm all about doing canning this year. So we basically had free reign to pick whatever fruit was ripe, SO COOL! Then on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, we got together and made apricot jam, cherry pie filling, canned apricots, and canned peaches. We also dried cherries and froze apricots. I think we canned about 80 jars and split them up. On my own, I canned tomatoes and more peaches. And I dried apricots. I also tried to can beets but that resulted in a pressure cooker exploding (YIKES!! My worst fear came true!) and a HUGE mess to clean up. So I just froze the rest of the beets instead. Which is what I will do with veggies from now on!

Then, on Saturday, we went camping at Enterprise Reservoir. They had actually drained the upper reservoir so we camped up there so we weren't chasing our little ones in and out of the water the whole time. We had a great time taking the kids on rides on the Rhino, cooking a yummy dutch oven dinner, complete with chocolate cake for dessert, and being chased by a wild animal.

WAIT! I have to tell you about the wild animal part! So, Andrea, Nicky and I were sitting around the fire, we had just finally gotten our kids to sleep. And now that we have that dang motor home, it goes on every camping trip that we go on. OK back to the wild animal part. So we were chilling by the fire and I decided that I needed to pee and go get a hoodie. Nicky decides that she needs to pee too. So we head over to the motor home and we hear rustling in the bushes. Being the awesome women we are, we run into the motor home but we decide that we are brave and go back out and sit by the camp fire again. So there we are, sitting by the fire when we hear something GROWL and run in our direction!

We scream, run (I totally tripped and almost fell into the fire) and we jump in the back of Andrea's truck. Andrea grabs an ax, Nicky grabs a shovel and I am holding my poor knee's because they really hurt! OK, you might ask where in the world are your husbands? Answer: Out in the Rhino, having the times of their lives! We scream for our friend Kris, who has already gone to bed, to hurry up and go find the guys. She jumps in her jeep and starts honking her horn and she goes out to find the men. We hurry up and get all the kids into the motor home and wait for our heros to come back and save us.

Instead, the men all come back and make fun of us. Things like, oooh was that deer scaring you? Or, are you sure that it was an animal? It was probably just the wind. Our response? When was the last time you heard a deer growl? And, no we were just imagining things and we thought it would be fun to wake up 9 kids and scare the crap out of them! Yeah, good times!

Moral of the story: Never go camping without a motor home, it could save you from a scary animal that wanted to eat you for dinner.