Peaches; Conquered...and One Really Cute Juicy Peach

I did it. I canned like crazy and whined and cried the whole way through it but it's done. We got a total of 19 bottles of peaches, 3 jars of peach freezer jam, and 5 jars of cooked peach jam.

Now that's it's done, it doesn't seem like such a task but here are the pictures to prove how messy it was.


The blanching and boiling and the pitting and peeling. The chickens gorged themselves on peach peelings afterwards. I think I hauled out 30 lbs of it to them - plus add on Lias's weight (see below) and I think I had about 50lbs I packed across the yard to the chicken coop.




Luckily (or maybe not) Ava was there to help me all along. No wait, for about 2 seconds till she decided it wasn't as fun as it looked. But that was right after she spilled all the "lite syrup" all over the counter while trying to get it into the jars. For being such a "lite syrup" it was super sticky to clean up. Which leads to this picture...


This was one side of the kitchen. The other side by the stove looked a little better.



Thank goodness I had Nathan there to quality control the canning rings to make sure they weren't in danger of breaking.

When John came home I told him he had to take me to dinner but instead I settled for pancakes with, what else? Peach jam all over. Yum, yum, yum. Adios to the peaches for this year.

And speaking of peaches. Here's a few shots of one juicy, ripe, ready for the kissing peach.





He's gotten quite nice and chunky, weighing it at 17lbs 12 oz at his 8 week checkup. We had a little scare the other day when he was really fussy during his nap. After he woke up for the 4 time I took his temp and realized he had a temp of 102 (under the arm). They get really concerned about babies under 3 months with temps, so into the doctor we went only to have them take his temp (rectally) and it show up at only 100. But we spent a traumatic evening getting blood work done (he cried and so did I) since they wanted to make sure he was fine. He is and I don't know where the temp I thought I found came from. Needless to say, I bought a new thermometer.

We're also getting quite a few sweet expressions and smiles during his happy times. Usually that's most of the day except for a few hours in the evenings. Poor John usually only gets to see him when he's fussy. John made the comment to me the other day that he feels like every minute he's home he's in charge of a kid. I told him I know exactly how he feels. I guess that's just life with 3 little ones. Life's a little crazy and chaotic, but we're all content too.

And a few of us are fat and content too.