Harvest Floor

I might be going slightly crazy but I had a blast canning food this summer. I started on peaches a few years ago and slowly added peach jam and grape jelly. This year I canned peaches, pears, plum jam, spiced plum butter, apple butter, apple sauce, apple pie filling, dried apples, grape leather, grape juice, grape jelly and helped my mom can 80 pounds of chicken. I know I'm nuts but it was so worth it. The kids love the fruit so much better than the store and I have tons of gift of preserves to give out for Thanks and Christmas. Jeff loved the applesauce because he had it as a kid and the canned chicken is sooo good and easy for enchiladas and soups. The biggest downfall was very sore muscles and what I now call "harvest floor". If you see the picture of the counter top after grape juice just imagine what the floor looked like. Holy Cow! You don't feel like mopping because the next day it will look the exact same. Jeff was very understanding.

You might be wondering where you put food storage like this in a condo. Well, on top of my kitchen cupboards works well and we have more in our room. It's so beautiful isn't it?

A New Perspective??

My neighbor dropped by to show me some art work the kids did while she was watching them last week. She asked me if I had taught him perspective and I said, "Huh? What's perspective?".
She showed my this picture Kyle (a kindergartener) drew and explained that perspective is drawing different sizes of objects to show distance. I looked at the picture and I was blown away. She was right. Kyle drew this little racquetball scene and even the racquet is smaller than the racquet in the forefront. I was amazed that he knew to draw the person before drawing the net.
My paternal Grandmother was an amazing artist and so many of my Clark cousins inherited that talent. In my immediate family only my younger sister was blessed. I'm beginning to be convinced more and more that Kyle was blessed with a talent. And I'm not just saying this because he goes through more computer paper than a print shop. You should see this kid's Huge folder of pokeman cards he's invented. He draws his little creature and makes sure he has a relevant name, gives him all these powers and numbers. It's amazing.
(by the way, I don't know who Rod is. It must have been a piece of scrap paper at my neighbor's house.)

Happy Halloween

Katherine was a Cat, Kyle was a skeleton, Josh was a karate ninja, Caleb was a baby skeleton, Mommy was Al Borlin, Daddy was a party pooper.


We gave Caleb a dum dum to keep him happy the last few minutes and this is how he fell asleep. He slept that way for 10 minutes.

At this house the kids wouldn't take their eyes off the statues. You never know when one could reach out and get you!

Pumpkin carving joy!

Oink Oink

Can you guess what we're all sick with????????






By the way---Swine flu/Shmine flu!! I know some people have suffered with this virus but for us we were lucky and it was Wimpy, Wimpy, Wimpy.
I guess it still could bite us in the butt but we'll cross our fingers and believe that we're done.

Happy 6th Birthday K-dog!

Kyle got to have a birthday party with friends this year and he was so excited. He decided on a pirate theme. We had a cannonball pinata (soooo not worth it to make at home), Treasure Chest cake, Pin the flag on the treasure map, and a treasure hunt. Josh was a great help and Katherine felt as big as the guests. We loved that we had to convince him to invite some boys. Kyle is quite the ladies man and keeps finding new girl friends at school. I love it.

Daddy's Home

I asked Kyle if he was excited to see Daddy and this is what I got.

Joshua would not take his eyes of the hallway the passengers come out from.

Still Watchin'!!!

Caleb wasn't nervous after not seeing him for 3 weeks.

Last fishing of the season

Everyone deserves cool uncles like our Uncle Brad. He took the kids fishing at Salem Pond while Jeff was away. Joshua is one determined focused kid and finally caught a fish before we had to leave.