Fall Break

We've had a busy weekend so far, but not quite as crazy as some weekends. It's been nice having the kids home from school. On Thursday I took the kids in for flu shots. My sweetie already had his at work. It turned out that they were out of the shots, but most of the kids opted for flu mist. Baby Doll and Curly have asthma, so they can't have the mist. I waited with them, so we will have our real shots next week. Then we all went to Menchies and used the Dog Walker's gift card and our free library coupons. It still cost me $10, but not bad for 8 people and frozen yogurt.

Thursday night was volleyball and football practices. Dance took the weekend off, but football rests for no man. Princess and Crafty made cupcakes for their friend birthday party they had on Friday. Princess has started a new job at Smith's. She will be working in the deli, so she has been training all week and then her real schedule starts next week. It will be tricky working her hours in around school, but I'm sure she will manage.

The birthday party was a bit smaller than the girls had hoped, but lots of fun. That's what happens when you pick a holiday weekend. We did a fire pit and roasted hot dogs, then the girls watched Cinderella. Sport still had football practice and we picked 6 buckets of tomatoes and the beans so you can guess what the rest of my weekend looked like.

On Saturday Princess was helping with the Distinguished Young Women pageant and Crafty was volunteering at the SoJo Marathon. Drama Queen has been gone all weekend having a party with some friends and Teach was working on her MA thesis. We also had two football games. Curly's was first and we prepared for bad weather and ended up sweating in the sun. Their game ended in an awesome win with Curly making 11 tackles. It was just before noon and we had to hoof it back across the valley to get to Sport's game. I changed into shorts, anticipating more sun, but I was wrong. I was glad my jacket was still in the car as we sat through a warm drizzle the entire game. His team also came through victorious and Sport did a great job in his new position as guard.

My amazing canner holds 14 quarts!

As we drove home from the games, I lamented to my sweetie about all my canning to do and he suggested that I have a nap first. That's one of the many reasons why I love this man! I felt so much better after a couple of hours of shut-eye. He made dinner while I started on the tomatoes. We decided to stew them rather than make sauce. I worked late into the night, but ended up with 28 quarts and 10 half-gallons for chili. Bossy and Fajita helped get them in the jars, but then their family headed home.

I love the family togetherness of canning days, but it is definitely hard work. My back is aching this morning. We have another party tonight that I will tell you about tomorrow. Most excitedly good news!