I have had a 10 pound box of blueberries in my freezer since Monday and I really needed to do something with some of them. This morning, I took out a bowl of them and bagged up the rest of them in freezer bags for later use. I ended up making a blueberry pie:

cinnamon-sugar pastry strips:

and blueberry jam:

Kelsey whipped up blueberry smoothies with what was left of the blueberries I took out:

Meanwhile, the guys were outside trying to get rid of a tree trunk that has been rotting away for three years now:

They ended up being successful, so I was able to plant some cyclamen and pansies:

Overall, it was a very productive day!

What type of government do you think we have in the United States of American? If you are not sure, be sure to watch this video.

Our church has an annual beach trip every September. We all arrive around lunch time and hang out for the whole day together. Before we left this year, we had a little bit of rain, thunder and lightning. The clouds were amazing at home:

I was able to get a picture of Kelsey at the beginning of the day at the beach:

The waves were incredible:

Matthew tried his shot at volleyball and had a great serve:

My favorite picture of the day:

Today, I tackled my freezer outside. I have been wanting to reorganize my freezer content list for a while, so today was the day to get it done. I took everything out of the freezer and wrote down everything that was in there. Then I put everything back in a more organized fashion.

Then it was onto the computer to create a new list to keep track of everything. I created headings across a landscape setting in Excel. These headings are: Ground Beef, Pork or Beef, OJ, Beans, Chicken, Sauces/Broth, Fruit, and Veggies. I printed out this list and attached it to a clipboard to keep on top of the freezer. Then I listed everything in each category from my list I had written down earlier. I am hoping this list will help me with my weekly meal planning!

Over the past week, I have canned about 48 pints of tomatoes! And today, I just found out that Homestead Originals blog is having a contest to give away Homestead Blessings DVDs and one of them is a canning DVD! You can enter this contest too! Just head over to her blog!

I have been canning jam for years. I did try to can pickles once and they didn't turn out.

We moved to a house with a glass top stove a few years ago and I have read a lot about glass top stoves cracking because of the heat and the weight of the canning pot. So I decided I would never be able to water bath can anything.

That is until my friend told me about using her Coleman stove outside to water bath can her tomatoes. I was able to go over to her house yesterday for my lesson.

The kids picked lots of tomatoes from the field next to her house:

We weren't able to get her Coleman stove to work right, so we ended up getting 11 quarts of tomatoes canned in side the house:

My friend sent me home with more fresh tomatoes so I could give it a try at home today. After running lots or errands today, I came home this afternoon and got busy. I picked up a new cookbook at Borders (with a 40% off coupon!) and read about processing pureed tomatoes. So I pureed lots of tomatoes and got my Coleman stove up and running:

I was able to fill up 8 pint jars of crushed tomatoes. Since only 7 will fit in the water bath canner, I gave one jar to a neighbor! I still had quite a bit of crushed tomatoes left, so I added some tomato paste and some seasonings to make some pizza sauce. I let that simmer for a while so we could have some dinner:

 This was a very yummy grilled cheese sandwich with little green tomatoes and fresh basil! After dinner, I packaged up the pizza sauce and here is what I ended up with after two days of canning:

I am so glad that the water bath canning works using my Coleman stove. Now I have to decide what to can next!

The kids and I drove up to Idaho last week to visit my parents and my Aunt Betty who flew out from Kansas. I haven't seen my Aunt Betty in years! She is our genealogy link who has provided us with lots of information on my mom's side of the family. Here is my Aunt Betty and my mom:

The little town my parents live in has some great garage sales. Matthew found this little item:

Kelsey was able to do her favorite thing at Grandma's house:

To continue on the cloud theme of the last couple of posts, here is one from where we stopped for lunch in Nevada:

And this is always a welcoming sight after being away from home for a few days and being on the road for hours to get home:

Today was humid and overcast in Idaho, but God provided some awesome displays in the sky:

SUV stands for Sons of Union Veterans. Since we began Civil War Reenacting, Matthew and I were curious if we had any relatives that fought during the Civil War. A couple of guys in our group were members of the SUV, so we decided to see what we could find out.

Thankfully, my Aunt Betty has quite a bit of genealogy information on my mom's paternal side of the family which proved that Matthew has a great-great-great-great grandfather that fought in the Civil War with the 81st Indiana.

So we finally got all of his paperwork together and this last weekend, our whole family actually became members of the Sons of Union Veterans (Matthew an official member and Kev an associate member) and the Auxiliary of the Sons of Union Veterans (this is the group Kelsey and I now belong to). Here is a picture of us with our medals:

Now on to AHG. AHG stands for American Heritage Girls. We are lucky enough to have a new troop just getting started in our town. Kelsey has been soooo excited about this group that she has been constantly asking when her new uniform was going to get here.

Well, last night at the troop meeting, the girls all received their new uniforms. Here is Kelsey:

Since we are big students of history and want to learn more about our country, these two groups are wonderful fits for our family. I am sure we will have some great adventures to share in the coming years as members of these groups.