Canning

So I had to post a picture of the fruits of my labor. I decided to attempt to can. Now I have never done this before but I figured it would help out my food storage. My neighbor helped me get a great price on chicken and so i went to work. And let me tell you, it was work! Courtney helped by cutting up all of the chicken while I prepared the bottles and lids. When I was done with all of it I had canned 36 pints. I am so relieved to be done with it. The only problem is that I am not really wanting to eat it. I am afraid I am going to poison us all. Now I now my pressure was high enough and it went long enough so hopefully I will be able to get over it. It is a little funny because I don't really even think about it when I open a can of chicken from Costco...Anyway, I am way excited that I was able to learn this skill and I know it will be delicious when I get to eating it.

Wrestling

Let me start this post off by saying that little kid wrestling is super funny. We get such a kick out of it. They don't really know what they are doing so they basically just roll around kinda hugging. Jaxon decided he would give it a try. I still don't know if he is that into it but he keeps asking to go to the tournaments so I guess he must think it is ok. The first tournament Courtney was out of town and Jax was pretty nervous not having his dad there. So we are waiting for it to start and he is walking around the outside of the mat and a little kid grabs him pulls him on to the mat and tackles him. He comes back up to the stands and starts crying and says he just wants to go home. I convinced him to try one match. Well he wrestled two and got pinned both times (I am not a very good wrestling coach). He then decided he was done and we forfeited the last match. I thought maybe he was done with the wrestling thing but he has since wrestled in two more tournaments. In both tournaments he has won on his weight class paper and received two gold medals. It seems all he needed was his dad coaching him. Oh, and knowing he gets a medal doesn't hurt anything either.

Fall/Halloween

I am really far behind. So I am going to back up a bit and try to catch up. We went out to the pumpkin patch the week before Halloween to get our pumpkins. Rylan was positive that he could carry his by himself. I was actually very frightened for the pumpkin. But, alas, it did survive. We had a good time. The kids all got their pumpkins and then we played at the kid play area. I think they all would have stayed all night if we would have let them.
Here is Kambree at the Halloween carnival at the local grocery store. We went and ate there and played all of the carnival games. The kids got little prizes and thought life was perfect. Seriously, did you know that a little plastic slinky is all a child needs to be happy. Kambree was a Vampire. I made a little tutu for her and she insisted on having little plastic snakes and bugs in her "scary" hair.

Jaxon was our little frankenstein this year. He thought his green makeup was stinky and so we had to take it all off. We then resorted to an idea one of my neighbors gave me...chalk. It worked out pretty well and it comes right off when you want it off. And it is non toxic. We just sat down outside and scribbled and then got the chalk dust and rubbed it on his face. He thought that was much better.

Averi was my cute little ducky. Just look at those cute cheeks. She didn't know what the heck was going on but she was pretty sure it was ok because she was getting carried all around the neighborhood. She didn't cry the whole time we were out trick or treating.

And Rylan was a horse. He got the first picture in the pumpkin patch because apparently his mom gets the worlds worst mom award. I can't find a picture of him in his costume. In my defense, we know we took some but my camera had an accident (it fell off my car and I almost ran over it) and I think we lost some stuff that was on it. I will have to post a picture when I get some from my mom. He was a cutie. This is the first year he understood the whole Halloween thing a little bit. He was up at a door and we asked him "what do you say", and he told the guy "TWO". That wasn't the answer I was looking for but he did get two treats at that house. We had a great Halloween.