School is in session!

It's that time of year again! This year we have Jeffrey in 12th grade, Beth in 10th grade, Jason in 9th grade, and Emily in 5th grade. I pray that this will be a very productive year in all that we learn in school, in character training, and in preparation for the future. We certainly need God's help and wisdom to be students of the Word, as well as our school subjects. We are thankful for the opportunity and privilege of schooling at home yet another year!

Grapes and more grapes

A friend of mine has a neighbor who was willing for us to pick his grapes, if we were willing to give him some jelly. So, Saturday afternoon, we went to Greeley and picked grapes. We had never picked grapes built over a trellis like this before. There was a glider underneath. It was somewhat difficult to pick the grapes from underneath. Rowen and Jeffrey took turns picking on top of the trellis standing on a 6 foot ladder.



Picking above one's head is hazardous to the eyes. We forgot to bring our goggles!

It was a cozy place to pick. We sure appreciate Leroy letting us do it.

We actually picked more grapes than this, but we gave some to Rowen's sister, so she could make jelly too. The grapes we ended up with weighed 40 pounds!

Here you can see how the trellis and glider were situated. Rowen is, of course, taking the picture, as he usually is.

On Labor Day, some of us spent the day in the kitchen making the grapes into jelly. We wore our mp3 players to help pass the time away as we worked. My faithful assistants, Jason and Emily, washed and de-stemmed all the grapes.

I cooked them and made the jelly. Emily did the sieving. I don't re-strain the juice through cheesecloth to make the clear jelly, because I like the pulp--more nutrition in the jelly. Since you have to use so much sugar to make it, I want there to be a redeeming factor. (Just my personal preference. I know it would never win the prize at the fair.)

I think this was the last batch of cleaned grapes. No wonder she looks so happy! It was a long day!

The 40 pints and 5 half-pints of jelly when the day was done.

Some catch up birthday pictures

I know everybody has been dying to see all the birthday cakes we have been eating recently :) So here goes! My pre-birthday cake, on August 23, was a DQ ice cream blizzard cake. It was very, very yummy and we had Michael Durkee to help us eat it. We had to have it on Saturday, because we don't buy on Sunday and of course, it needed to be eaten right away!

It was pretty, besides being yummy!

On Sunday, August 24, we had triple chocolate bundt cake. The reason I was smiling so big in this picture was that someone had just said I got to have all of it!

I actually shared it with our guests, Mathew, Nicole, and Phoebe Hinkle and our family.

Baby Ethan has not yet matured enough to know what chocolate is, much less how wonderful it is!

Jason had a French vanilla cake with peach jello poured over and through, covered with cream cheese frosting and sprinkles. It was yummy also!

For Jason's birthday, we went ice skating at the Ice Haus in Greeley. All the pictures taken of our people skating did not show their skates, so I chose this picture instead to represent our evening. This is our children posing by the sculpture of ice skaters outside the Ice Haus!