I've been very busy lately harvesting from my garden and my mom's garden and pear tree. I had not had a garden since we had kids and then it wasn't the best garden. We decided to give it a try again this year now that I'm a SAHM. It has been great. I have approximately 100 bags of tomatoes frozen, a little over 20 bags of zucchini and yellow squash, around 10 (so far) of shredded squash (I add it to recipes to increase the veggie content), 8 jars of salsa, 4 bags of acorn squash (so far), 3 jars of pear jelly, 22 bowls of pear sauce (like apple sauce), plus pear juice. This week I plan to start making some tomato sauce. Next year I plan on increasing the size of my garden and growing a few more varieties of squash and some cauliflower and broccoli. I would also like to get a few more fruit trees (we have two apple, but one is dying) and some berry plants. I have already let my family know that I would love some fruit trees and berry plants for my birthday next year. The only problem is that I think my excitement over being able to cut some of our grocery costs is going to be more than our freezers can handle. I'll have to learn to can, it's just so much more work than freezing. It's also done wonders for the kids eating too. Sweet and Sugar do pretty good with most veggies, but have never liked beans of any kind. Now that they've had fresh green beans they love them, even out of the can. Bam ate an entire can of green beans by himself with dinner the other night. Sweet is not a huge fan of tomatoes. She tolerates them, but certainly won't go out her way for them, that is unless they're fresh from mom's garden. They're excited to see what we're growing and want to eat it.
Other than that, we've had a good birthday week. The kids have to love this week because they rarely get sweets, but everyone gets a special sweet made in honor of their day so I've already baked a cake, hot fudge cake, and iced brownines this week. Plus we have a birthday party with family on monday in which they will each get their own cake. One cake would probably cut it and that's what we've done in the past, but every other kid gets their own cake. I want them to like their birthday and not feel as if they get short changed because their birthdays are so close together. So tonight I baked Sweet's cake, which will be a princess. Tomorrow I will bake the boys cakes; a tractor and a dinosaur. I would say which is which, but Sugar can't make up his mind which one is for him. I'll have to decorate all of them tomorrow too. It's been a long time since I've done much cake decorating so we'll se how it goes. I hope they atleast come out presentable.
I am also looking forward to some time with my hubby. He has some time off of work coming up and I look forward to having him around more. It's so much easier when it's two on three rather than one on three. It's so much easier to get things done when he can take them out to play while I work on something rather than me having to get things done during nap time and after bed time or with kids under my feet. I also know how much the kids enjoy spending time with their dad. He took them out to play this morning while I finished up the pearsauce and cleaning so tonight when I asked Sweet what her favorite part of the day was, her responce was playing outside with daddy. That makes my heart melt.
I also got to go to a presentation earlier this week on food alergies. It was very well put together. It was aimed more at awareness for those who don't know anyone with an allergy. The woman who presented has worked with several of the school districts in our area to put food allergy plans in place. I was very disapointed that the school system that my kids will be going to does not currently have one, but I was relieved when I takled to her afterwards and she said that she's working with the school nurse to put one in place. It's funny that a couple of years ago I was one of those that kind of scoffed at having to make special arangements for just one or two kids and now I've learned how truely important it is. I am very selective about who watches our kids and who they are around with food for fear that Bam may come into contact with something he's not supposed to have. People don't think to read every single label (we had an incident at Easter with a jelly bean that was processed on equipment with peanuts). Just 1/1000 of a peanut can cause a serious, deadly reaction. Food allergies are a big deal. They can kill.
Now on a lighter note. Bam doesn't like vegetables. He never has, other than a select few. He has grown to tolerate most of them now. He ususally needs some encouragement and or help to eat them but no longer screams and cries about it. But for the mear mention of cake, he will eat them without any help or need of encouragement. It may not be pretty (note picture). He may gag on every bite, but he will put bite after bite in until they are all gone to get his beloved treat. Did I mention that my kids love birthday week?
We left at 2am and arrived at 4:30pm. It was a long drive that involved lots of potty breaks (made me wonder why I potty trained them early) and a stop that lasted over an hour to clean up from a car sick little boy. The directions that we got from AAA were awful. They sent us through a bunch of little towns and through an area that I definitely didn't want to break down in for fear of having to hike 20 miles before finding another human. Thus we got internet directions for the way home and will probably get a GPS for the next trip.
Sweet slept great the while time, but they boys were a different story. This was Bam's first time out of a crib. We tried putting him on a mattress on the floor next to Sugar's bed but that was a no go. The boys ended up sleeping (if you want to call it that) together. I think they discussed whose turn it was to keep mom up that night. I think I got more sleep the first 2 nights home than I did the entire week. Thankfully they fell right back into their regular sleep paterns the first night home. The only sad thing is that Sugar stayed dry all night there and hasn't been able to keep it up here.
The kids absolutely loved the beach. Sweet and Bam had no fear of the water. Sugar was a little more cautious, but loved the little pools of water farther in on the beach. They had a great time playing in the sand and water, chasing the birds, running on the beach, looking for shells, and playing in the pool under the house (who puts a pool where it doesn't ever get sun, only the breese from the beach?).
The trip home went pretty well. I got some meds to keep Sugar healthy, but gave them to all of the kids after the other 2 started puking about an hour into the trip. Thankfully they hadn't eaten yet so it didn't take an hour to clean up. I also had a bucket in reach for such things on the way home. They were awake most of the trip and actually pretty content most of it. They traveled much beter than I thought they would. It was definately easy to tell when we needed to take a break to let them get out and run, but who doesn't want a break after awhile.
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