Tuesday, October 1, 2013

Canning 2013

If you would have told me when I was younger, I mean a kid, that I would enjoy canning later on in my life I would have told you were nuts.

Well since I am pretty much a stay at home mom and now have a little one that is starting to eat food, I like it. WHY...4 reasons

  1. Gives me something to do. 
  2. Its builds up my food storage.
  3. I know where the food is from.
  4. It is pretty much free. 
So I have re-learned how to make spaghetti sauce, salsa, stewed tomatoes, pear sauce, apple sauce, and dried cinnamon apple rings.

Mind you, Matt wasn't the nicest about this.

  • He wasn't thrilled when I told him that he couldn't eat the pear sauce, because I said it was for Kara as I guess he really likes pear sauce. Who knew?!? But I did end up putting up more pear sauce, so now he can enjoy a bottle of two. I even got on a ladder to pick more pears after I swore I wasn't canning any more this year. 
  • He wasn't too thrilled to have to pick any fruit. Mind you that is all he really had to do. 
  • He wasn't happy when I tell him to stop eating the dried cinnamon apples, which he really likes. 


Fruits (literally) of my labor in pictures. We had an interesting time canning with Leili and Kara but it worked and it was fun. The shortest day canning was 5 hours and the longest I think was 12 hours. Kali canned once with us and said she was done.















Does anyone have GRAPES 
they are willing to part with?

9-11-2013 Spent at the Natural History Museum

I got involved in the summer reading program through the Library and received a free ticket to the Natural History Museum. So Matt and I went up on Sept. 11 to enjoy the fruits of my labor.

We liked the dinosaur part and the natural disaster part the best. We also enjoyed lunch on the deck half way through our visit. We would have stayed longer in the natural disaster part, but we had to leave so Matt could sleep before having to start his shift that night. 








Camping with Elswoods

We went on our last camping trip this year with the Elswoods, but it was our first with them this year. A little odd as we usually go at least twice a year with them. Next year will be alot better, especially if we get a trip to Bear Lake in.

Well, I went up early with Kara on Friday, September 6th to set up camp and to get a camping site. David was at his first week of a new job and wouldn't be able to get off early to come up on Friday, so the Elswoods were going to come up on Saturday morning. Matt really wanted to go to Comicon 2013, so he went there and was going to meet up with me that evening.

I just really wanted to make sure we got a good spot and enjoy my favorite place, Ledgefork Campground, near Smith and Morehouse Reservoir.

I left around 11 am after Kara got up from her nap. As we drove up Parley's canyon I could see the rain clouds everywhere. I was hoping to have good weather enough to set up camp before any rain fall.

It took a bit of maneuvering, but I was able to get the canopy set up and Kara and some chairs under it before a down pour. While it rained I feed Kara and put her down for a nap. After the rain stopped, I went to putting up the tent. That took some time....possibly an hour or two...as I had never set it up before or even helped Matt with it, but I followed the instructions and presto, I put up the tent all by myself. I was quite pleased.



I even got all the gear into the tent while Kara hung out on the chair. Kara and I went for a walk around the campground. She enjoyed it immensely as it was the first time being faced forward in a stroller. She fell asleep.



Matt finally arrived in his Star Trek outfit 1/2 hour late, but just in time to make dinner and get a fire started. We enjoyed a nice evening together after having put Kara down for the night. We had some neighbors that pulled into the campground next to us at 11:00pm. I wasn't too happy, especially when they woke us up at 4:00 am to get ready to go hunting and start their stupid 4-wheelers. After I fed Kara, we went back to sleep. I even slept okay as we had borrowed some camping pads from Jared.



Saturday rolled around and we thought we had over slept because we didn't roll out of our tent until 9:00am. No Elswoods yet, so we started getting breakfast ready. We ended up eating at 10:30am. Fantastic timing as the Elswoods pulled up right in time. They ended up camping across from us. Krisitn and I ended up not feeling the greatest after eating though.
Matt and Kara (she is under the hood)
Well as our camping history goes, when the Elswoods and Monsons go camping together it RAINS. And boy did it RAIN and RAIN and RAIN. It was the start of 2 weeks of rain. Well we still ended up having fun.

We spent time under our canopy and in their tent trailer. In between raining spells, we had a few adventures: Matt and David took the kids on a walk.
We let the kids jump off a tree stump.
Katie

Parker part 1

Parker part 2

Parker part 3


Kids tried catching water skeeters in the river.
Kara took a couple naps.
Katie fell down and hurt her knee. Equaling into David having to dig a rock out of it.
Roasted Marshmallows late.
Stayed up late while ALL the kids slept in the tent trailer and went to bed at midnight.






All in all we had a lot of fun even with the rain. Elswoods didn't even have to pay for their camp site thanks to the camp host being so nice. We did though as I had pre-paid the day before, but we were able to have 2 cars at our site.


Can't wait until next year's fun when Kara is walking and into everything!


Comicon Salt Lake 2013

When Matt found out that Comicon was going be in Salt Lake he was dying to go. At first it didn't look like he could as we were going to be going to camping with the Elswoods, BUT fate worked in his favor. David ended up getting a new job, so his schedule changed and the Elswoods wouldn't be able to come up camping until Saturday morning. The camping site I wanted to go to wouldn't accept online reservations, so I decided I would go up early with Kara and get a campsite, while Matt would go to Comicon with his pals as long as he was up to the camping site by 7pm.

Well Matt enjoyed himself at Comicon. Everyday for about 2 weeks he talked to me about Comicon. Getting an app on his phone. Pre-checking what was happening, so he could make sure to be at the locations and events he wanted to be at. He went on and on and on. I was so glad once the day arrived. 

He even got dressed up for the event as a Star Trekker. We found him some boots and black pants at the DI. He was SOOO excited!
















New nephew...Zach Monson

We went to our newest nephew's baby blessing on September 1st. Before we left, we took pictures of Kara and her cousins together.

Jairus wouldn't be in the pictures without a soccer ball. Tali (age 5) kept thinking she was big enough to move Zach (age 1 month) around. Kara was tired and didn't enjoy any of it.