725 Pounds

We are nuts, yes, I am aware of it. My neighbors told me they were glad we are normal, because the last owners of this house sure weren't. Well.... I kinda laughed a little and said we try to be normal. This week has proved otherwise. On my birthday - Wednesday - we bundled up nice and warm because it was 39 degrees and headed out to meet Kurt, Jennie and the girls at the orchard. We were there for a total of 3 hours.

The girls ran around eating apples and tossing them around and getting dirty while we picked 20 bushels for the church, which is roughly 900 pounds in less than an hour! They were nice and large. Then we picked windfalls for ourselves for an hour and a half and loaded up in the truck and came home. We weighed them to fill my curiosity. 725 pounds was the result. I told my grandma, who has canned all her life, and she rolled with laughter and wondered what we would do with them all. Yesterday and today we canned apples. Our kitchen is a great canning kitchen with the island. We had up to 5 people at once and it wasn't really crowded. It helped that we used a camp stove on the back porch to can 2 water baths at once - as you can kinda see in the picture of our final product.

We ended up splitting 161 quarts of sauce, 22 pints of apple butter and of juice left over from steaming the apples - probably about 8 gallons. I still have about 100 pounds of apples to dry, make pies and put in the freezer - if I keep at it, I will be done before I know it!

End In Sight?

I commented to a friend a week or so ago that I wanted to stay in this house until the day that I die. She said, "Oh that's so awesome that you love your house so much!" I replied with, "Oh, no, I never want to go through all the work of moving!" Don't interpret this as me not loving our new house because I do but I'm not sure if there is ever going to be an end in sight of both unpacking and the mile long To Do List. I am adding work faster than I am getting things crossed off. I am under the firm belief that the prior owners treated this place like they would a rental. I don't think a lone hammer was lifted in the name of this house since the the contractor sighed in relief that his job was finished. A small portion of repairs have included the following events - death defying vaulted ceiling fan removal, repair and re-installation; a hole in the wall named "Baby Beluga" by the lovely almost 2 year old; 600,000 nail holes filled, (patiently awaiting paint); jetted tub on/off switch repair; leaky sink and shower returned to fully operational status... and the list goes on. You'd be here until tomorrow reading both my "done" and "to do," so I will spare you that mess.

The good news is this: we love craigslist. We have been running around getting things that are posted on the "free" section and giving a little TLC and making them like new again. Items ranging from a lawnmower ($10 fix), to a garage door opener that was "too noisy," to a trampoline, and a few other pricey items that had nothing wrong with them! Thank you wasteful Boise citizens. Keep posting your discarded items and we will keep checking for things we need. I love your wasteful ways combined with my superhuman husband's mad skills to fix almost anything - all but our broken air conditioner I suppose, but hey, a guy can't fix everything.

Speaking of my Superman, last drill his unit was officially notified of deployment. Feb 2012. Do you think that 17 months is enough of a notice? A little overboard, but I guess its nice of them to tell us as soon as they find out so we can do all we can to prepare and do lots of family time stuff. We are not "sorry" so please don't be sorry for us, we are looking forward to the deployment as a great opportunity for Kevin to further his career and I'm doing my best to keep a positive attitude.