Preserving

We spent Tuesday morning picking raspberries (YUM!) and cherries (Tara is still laughing at my joyful dance of finding a ladder to reach those yummy bursts of flavor; I'm still trying to get cherry juice stains out of 'Nica's shirt). We spent that same afternoon at the beach with our kids, picnicking, playing in the sand, and having a great time.

Wednesday we took those 30 pounds of cherries and 3 pounds of raspberries and made:

strawberry jam
strawberry fruit leather

Huh? Oh, yeah. Well, we also bout a couple flats of strawberries ($1/lb). We also made

raspberry mango jam
cherry jam
dried mango
dried cherries

I still have some cherries ready to puree and turn into cherry fruit leather, but after making strawberry fruit leather, baking 2 loaves of bread, laundry, and gathering swim things and food for lunch and dinner, I didn't have enough time to do more than pit the cherries for the leather.

Yes, today we spent EIGHT HOURS outdoors, seven-and-a-half of which were spent at the pool. Travis was able to take the afternoon off (he was waiting for some chemicals he ordered to arrive so he could continue with his experiment; he went in for half the day to get some things done, but then decided that since he couldn't do much else and he was going to work on Saturday, he might as well take this afternoon off). So, we ate lunch and dinner at our friend's pool, played and splashed. I think my daughters look more brown than they ever have in their lives. I think Miranda got a little sunburned, but over a tan (so she's REALLY dark). All of them were beyond exhausted when we got home at 7:30 tonight. Whew!

And, what's on the agenda for tomorrow? Well, since I can't go to the beach (which is my first pick, but it's the Venetian Festival in St. Joseph, MI and there's a carnival set up in my parking spot and it'd be waaaayyyy too crowded) we are going berry picking and will bring home our yummy organic blueberries to freeze, jam, and turn into fruit leather. Mmmm, I love blueberries.

I love summer!!!

Oh, yeah, and I'm also supposed to be getting ready for my trip to visit family. Yeah, I've got a bit on my plate...

(Sorry, no pics of today. Need up upload them from some of the other activities we did with Nana while she was here. Maybe if I can create a time-warp to add a few hours to my day... anyone got any ideas how to do that? Even better, how about something that would allow instantaneous travel. That would save me SO much time!)