Over the winter and cold spring we have eaten every jar of jam in our pantry. Correction: Sam has eaten every jar of jam in our pantry. It seems he lives on jam, nutella and potato bread. So this year we have made a concerted effort to have enough jam to meet Sam’s addiction, any future kidos needs and have enough to give as Christmas presents.
Anthony did a web search and found a place called Rowell Brothers U-Pick. It’s way out down Scholls Ferry road and across the urban growth boundary. So for the past 2 months, every other weekend, we have been driving over to the westside of town and picking like mad. Blueberries 99¢ a pound and all other berries $1.25 a pound.
We now have a HUGE pile of canned goodness. We have: Strawberry jam, Loganberry jam, Blueberry jam, Raspberry jam, Marionberry jam, Apricot jam, Blackberry jam & Boysenberry jam. Anthony also made 3 fun jams this year: Watermelon jelly, Jalapeno jelly and a super hot Habanero jelly.
Not only does this serve to quench Sam’s addiction, making the jam has been a really fun family project. Every member of the family has helped in one way or another. For example; in our most resent last batch we tried to make jalapeno jelly, which we did succeed in. Both of us were working in tandem when Anthony looked down at his foot and noticed it had turned green. Seems when we opened the green food coloring some dried crusty’s dropped on the wood floor unnoticed by us at the time.
As
we worked and walked around the kitchen in our bare feet we smeared that tiny amount of green dried crusty all over the floor and all over the bottoms of our feet. So before we could end the day, we had to do a super clean of the kitchen floor. Then and only then were we able to sit back relax and kick up our incredible hulk feet.
Berry season is finally over for us…. but we still have 2 buckets of blueberries to eat/cook/jam. We also have a request from Anthony’s boss for some homemade orange marmalade. But the next big cooking adventure should be apples. Anthony found his grandmothers recipe for the applesauce he was raised on, so we will be picking apples soon.
Our next big travel adventure is a thanksgiving trip to Phoenix. The whole Sorensen clan is gathering for thanksgiving and to celebrate Joshua’s parents 30th wedding anniversary. So we are taking the whole week off and are flying down and perhaps do a road trip to the Grand Canyon.
We booked our travel via Expeida, probably for the last time ever. Reason one Anthony is going to try and sell Disney travel as a part time thing so he will be booking with commissions for our future trips. Second Expedia totally screwed up our finances. They charged us for 3 trips, yet did not book or ticket anything. Joshua had to call the bank twice and Expedia twice to get the whole mess fixed. So Expedia is now dead to us.
The adoption front has gotten very quiet. We recently had to resubmit our financials and our fingerprints for our yearly update. We all had to get fingerprinted again. This time we did not go to Boys and Girls to have it done, but to a passport/fingerprinting place downtown. So funny to watch this little russian lady with a heavy accent try and take Sam’s fingerprints!
But other then that activity, all is quiet on the western front. Very few kido profiles are even available to review or to match with. We still have a few home study’s out a few kidos that we have not heard back from yet. Heres hoping no news is good news!