My pantry.

Since you've been bored with pumpkin posts, I thought I'd keep with the food theme.  Earlier this fall I think I posted that I would show you my pantry when we were done canning.
Every time I tried to snap a picture of it, the camera wouldn't work. It turns out the batteries died.
Right. There. In. My. Camera.
It was awful.
So I bought new batteries, charged them up and...got busy with life stuff.
But I hadn't completely forgot.

And while I realize that you haven't exactly been waiting on pins and needles for this picture, I do want to prove to myself that I am not a slacker.  I did not, however clean this up before snapping pictures. You'll have to suffer through it.

Here are what's left of the green beans we canned last year:

Here are the tomatoes,

grape juice,

and salsa

that we canned this year....with glimpses of the home-canned spaghetti and pizza sauces. 



And while I don't EXPECT to get snowed in this winter, I AM prepared in case we do.  We have enough store-bought peanut butter to hold us over for weeks. We're about due for a blizzard.  Any year now.  If you run out of food at your house, just strap on the snowshoes and come on over--I'll share.

Happy Anniversary to us!

This week I had the awesome privilege of sharing our 21st anniversary with my husband. This year we {gasp} got away from the kids--just the two of us--and enjoyed a couple of days in each other's company.
We love this time of year. It seems that every year on our anniversary it is dubbed the peak time for viewing the fall foliage. It is so very nice of the weather people to recognize the importance of that date.
Anyway, we went to prime Amish Country in Ohio. Not the normal, every day Amish country that we're in the thick of...but the commercialized, highly marketable Amish Country that, in truth, has little to do with the Amish people. Mennonites are who you usually see working at the stores. But that's another story for another day.
The leaves were beautiful. I tried to get some pictures with my camera phone, but somehow it reset itself back to the original settings and it takes small pics again. So...use your imagination.

tada! a tree!

And in this pic, if you squint and tilt your head just right, you'll see a humongous scarecrow sitting on the porch roof of this building. I think they sold furniture. We didn't stop. Not even to take the picture--which explains its off-kilt slant and the blurry car in the foreground.

In fact, we stopped for very few things. When I say "we" I, of course, mean my husband--since he did all the driving. For some reason we were in a hurry to get...nowhere. And we couldn't stop anywhere on the way. He's a funny man....even on a quick getaway retreat he still can't slow down and relax. I love him more than words can express.

Happy anniversary, wonderful man. We're growing old together!

Tomorrow I get my kitchen back!

The tomato juice is made

the pizza sauce is made


and the last of the grapes were used up in making juice today.


Tomorrow the kids and I will pack away all the canners, rings and equipment and I'll have my kitchen countertops back. I've been canning for nearly a month and I am sooooooo ready for this stuff to disappear for another year.

Tomorrow I think I'll start making up batches of cookie dough to freeze for later--when it's baking season. You know, drop oatmeal or chocolate chip cookie dough onto trays, freeze them, then bag 'em up with baking instructions and pack back into the freezer. Then, when you've got the oven heated up from baking a meatloaf or a casserole, you can just pop a sheet of cookies in the oven in no time and VIOLA! there's dessert.

I love it when I look like super mom! :)

Besides, now that I'm in perpetual motion mode, I have to do SOMETHING lest I look like a slug. The winter cometh...and I really do turn into a slug on those dark, depressing days.

Oh...Allie, I just want to thank you for all your encouraging words. You don't know how much it means to me to find a friendly comment after I've posted. Thanks for being there for me, friend! I'm sorry for all the times you've asked a question and I haven't answered. You deserve better. I love you, man! ;)

Critters...again

In late July and early August I blogged about some of the critters in our world...and promised pics of others.

Well, today is the day, my friends.

You're barely able to contain your excitement. I can tell these things.

So without further eloquence, meet:

the salamander,

the baby bass,

and the uninvited bat.

Yes, that's a badmiton racket. You don't think bats let you pick them up and move them out of the house, do you? I don't allow my boys to touch a bat--and you KNOW that *I'm* not going to touch one. Besides, you have to STUN them before you can move them--hence the racket.

We also had three toads...but I made the boys turn two of them loose. It's really difficult to catch enough crickets for three hungry toads. And we have crawdads. I don't know how many we have today. The boys keep catching them and putting them in the same tank. Crawdads are territorial, you know. You can fill in the blanks on why the population keeps dwindling. I don't know why I don't have any pictures of these critters. I handed the camera to the middle child with instructions to bring me pics...but these are all I got for my troubles. Oh well, it will give me something to blog about later.

TTFN

What is it like in your part of the country?

Last week when we traveled to my parents' house to take the Senior Portraits, I snapped a few pictures since:
A) I had my camera in hand

and

B) my 16-yr-old wants to drive every chance he gets.

I've been wanting to do a blog on this every since I opened my blog account. Well...actually...since before that. I have a friend (HI COLLEEN!) who lives in Colorado. I live in Ohio. She was in West Virginia (get out the map if you need help with this, people) and so...since she was so close...we hopped in the car and drove over and saw her. The conversation drifted to the terrain and the differences in the two areas and she asked me something along these lines: "How can you stand this? I feel like I'm boxed in!" And you know what? I never really thought about it. I've lived in the hills all my life. When you travel, you're either on the hilltop, in the valley, or in between going up or down. (Life is kinda like that, too.)

So here we go.
Since we're in the hills, it's a good place to have livestock.












Cattle are popular.












And when you're on your way up to the hilltop or down to the valley, you have to go through a lot of twists and turns. If only I'd have waited one more second you'd have seen the next turn after this one. Sometimes you really zig-zag!












And sometimes it straightens out.

Going down...just so we can go up again.












You can't tell it, but through these closest (bare) trees you get your first glimpse of The River. We're on the hilltop here. We have to go to the valley to get to The River.












And down here the road is flatter and straighter.












Every time I mention The River on the web, someone always asks, "What River?"
The OHIO River, of course!












Where the barges run up and down The River all day and all night.












And that reminds me of a story...
Remind me to tell it to you later. Woo-Hoo!

What I've done been doin'...

I've got graduation on my mind.

So far we've...

... shopped for decorations and paper products. *check*

... planned the menu. *check*

... bought the invitations, set the date and time. *check* *check* *check*

... made out the guestlist (*check*) only to have several people from church ask if they were invited (oops, oversight on my part). (*uncheck*)
... printed out a diploma because the one I ordered won't be here in time. *check* Found a really nice frame for it. *check*
... taken photos, narrowed them down, printed the proofs. *check* *check* *check*
(Shelly, I looked into the place where you got your pics and the closest one is the same one you used. Thanks, anyway!)

Wanna see? I knew you would.

We each have our favorites. Her daddy doesn't care for the ones of her peeking around the corner of the barn...but it shows her playful side, so we'll definately order a few of those prints. We'll let him pick out which one to use for the big frame. BTW, most of these were taken at my parent's farm. The one by the water was taken at the local park. The one with the guitar was taken at church. We've been travelin'!!!

Okay, now I'm off to pack. We're going camping for a few days in an attempt to unwind and regroup. I'm so frazzled I can't think straight. "See" ya later next week. Be good. :)

Bring on the outlaws...

My knight in cardboard armor is ready for 'em.

Timothy spent the afternoon playing with a cardboard box, a Boy Scout knife and a wild imagination.

Gotta love that boy.

The end of another month...

February is coming to an end.

Sorry to break it to you that way...all sudden and everything.

I mean...you were going to find out anyway. Right?

The good news in all of this is that we'll soon be seeing some of these:

How many of us are still writing "2008" on stuff?

{holding hand up} I am.

My dog. She's so ladylike.

She crosses BOTH pair of legs when she's relaxing.
Pardon the messy floor.

This picture was taken six years ago.

Since then we've constantly maintained a

neat and tidy house with no clutter.

.

{hysterical laughing}

Yeah. Right.

I have a profile picture!

Did anyone notice?
I spent the afternoon trying to get a picture of myself.
I hate that!
But even though *I* know what I look like, I have never met some of you and *you* don't know what I look like. So to prove that I'm a real person, I spent the afternoon taking a hundred pictures, deleting most of them and settling on a couple to keep.

And you know what I like about the few pics that I kept? It's that you can't see the white hair! I'm not going grey....I'm going white. My hair is very dark brown, so it has a salt-and-pepper look to it.

But these are the best ones. I made my oldest boy help me pick. Ignore the stuffed turtle growing out of my head in this one:

Here are the only other pics of me on my computer. I'm not one to stand in *front* of the camera. I'm usually the one *behind* the camera. The camera is NOT good to me....as you can see. Here's me dressed up like a Hillbilly at our church's theme night:

See...I'm holding a camera! No, not in that hand...I'm holding dh's gun for him...the OTHER hand.
I cropped this one to use as an avatar on a message board.

And this one I cropped to use as an avatar on the same message board. It was taken by a gal at church. I was taking pics of our church picnic and she appeared in the viewfinder with her camera pointed at me. I laughed, pointed at her and said something clever, like...YOU! The next day she emailed me the photo and told me I HAD to put it on the church's website along with the other picnic pictures. I hate that.

But THIS is the reason why it took me a hundred tries to get a picture of myself. Because when I see a camera pointed at me, I do goofy stuff...like smile weird...and raise one eyebrow.

I need help.

Wordless Wednesday.

Dayton Air Force Museum

http://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/

Wordless Wednesday (almost)

What? Did you want to sit here?

Nice haircut, Tim.

BTW....I've lost 12 pounds now. YAY!

Ever lose anything?

A few days ago when I posted about Timothy when he was 6 years old, I knew JUST the perfect photo that I wanted to use. But...
I. could. not. find. it.
It was lost. I was a picture of him, wearing a wine-o cap, standing in front of the gecko tank at the zoo.
You know the one, right?
It's adorable.
It was lost.
Well, today I went through my backup discs from way back...and I FOUND it!

And you know what? He's wearing a ball cap. And he's standing in front of the Mudpuppy tank. At least I was right about him being at the zoo. He's still adorable, though.

I do have a picture of a gecko at the zoo. It's one of my all-time faves. Maybe that's where I got confused. It doesn't explain the hat mix up, though.
And you know what? I'm not even sure this is a gecko. Does anybody know what this critter is? Obviously I have lost my mind.

Then I got to looking through the rest of the lost pictures that I hadn't yet missed.

A summer vacation at Lake Erie:

Where we went fishing, of course.An April vacation in Florida. Oh how beautiful the white sand beach and the blue, blue water. This was the year that dolphins came around while we were there.Christmas 5 years ago.

My oldest playing soccer.

And as I strolled down memory lane the rest of the family crowded around the computer. As we relived some of our adventures it occurred to me that I need to make a bigger effort of taking pictures. I'm not one to carry my camera with me everywhere I go. I *LOVE* my digital for the fact that I can see right away if I need to adjust exposure, lighting or focus. I wish my 35mm did that! Do you know how much film that would have saved me?

Anyway, we agreed that we need to go back to Lake Erie...maybe this summer. And we'll all miss our Florida vacations now that Mom and Dad have moved back to Ohio. Maybe one day we'll venture out with our camper and visit a beach closer to home. Until that time, I still have my pictures. I know where they are.

Now, if only I could find my lost brain cells.