Strawberries Galore!

Friday I overheard some ladies talking about a strawberry sale over at Marsh and decided I had to have some strawberries for making some jam.  The strawberries were not that great (to be expected since it's winter), but they were fine with enough sugar and cooked into jam.   Then Teresa texted me Saturday morning that Meijer was having an even better sale (10/$10) and I definitely wanted in on that deal.  So she got me 11 more pounds.  So in total I had 19 pounds of strawberries to process.  Since Coleson had ISTEP Monday morning, I let him have the rest of the day off from school.  And that meant we had time to make jam.  We started with the plucking.  Katie and Ethan were big helpers too.  They took care of handing berries to us.  And then they disposed of the stems we plucked.

I bought these new pluckers on Amazon a few weeks ago and was excited to try them out.  They're pretty awesome.  Usually after that many berries, my fingers would be sore from stem plucking, but not with this baby. 


Katie also doubled as the photographer so I got to be in some of the pictures.  She had a cold coming on so she didn't get to help too up close with the berries.  But she and Ethan did eat quite a lot of them. 


After the plucking and cleaning it was on to cooking the jam.  I started rotating batches on the stove- there were 6 batches in all-  while Katie and Ethan entertained Owen.  They did a pretty good job of it because he was just laughing like crazy at his silly siblings.

 

This is one CUTE baby!!!  Can you see his big smile under there?

When I went to get more sugar in the food storage room, I found that the sugar was hard as a rock.  I set Hunter to work breaking up the rocks.  You know, it's all about finding the right job for the right kid.  Hunter usually doesn't really care for helping in our projects- he loses interest and wanders off.  But this sugar job kept his attention and then some.  He spent more than an hour hunched over the bucket chopping.  It was one of his textile things- the grains of sugar had him mesmerized.   But by bedtime he had that entire 5 gallon bucket back to usual fine sugar.  And I'd kept him busy for all that time.  It was the right job for him.


Tuesday a snow storm blew in and we spent all of Tuesday afternoon snuggled at home making jam.  As the batches were coming off the stove and cooling the kids were SO excited to get some.  They were licking spoons and bowls.  I had to make sure everything was staying sterile that still needed to be.  Fresh jam is even better with fresh warm bread so I made 6 loaves of bread too. The bread is just a way to get the jam to your mouth.  My kids are funny that way.  Give them a pile of candy or the choice of homemade bread and jam- and 9 times out of 10 they'd pick the bread and jam.  I made an actual dinner Tuesday night, but shouldn't have bothered because everyone filled up on bread and jam.  But that's the reason I made it, because they love it so much.  Ethan was so worried about missing the jam that he didn't want to take his nap so he got his pillow and blanket and waited on the kitchen floor. 

All in all we made 15 pints of strawberry jam out of 5 batches (the 6th batch we ate out of the pan before it even made it to jars :).  It's been a yummy week.

Suspicious night noises

I woke up in the middle of the night last night, not to Owen, but to the sound of whispers and little feet in the hall way.  I sleep on the side of the bed that looks directly down the hallway (since I sleep much lighter than Jared) so that way I can just sit up and see right down the hall.  Just for reasons like this.  After my eyes adjusted I could see Katie and Ethan hunched over and tip-toeing down the hall with their pillows and whispering to each other.  I looked at my watch.  4 am.  Weird.  Usually Katie and Ethan sleep like rocks until 7 am.  I can go in their rooms and check on them in the middle of the night, put clothes away, move their blankets around and they usually don't even stir- until 7 am.  So really strange that they're up at 4.  And even more strange that they're carrying their pillows away from their bedrooms.   I laid there and thought before acting.  I knew they had built a fort out of pillows yesterday afternoon.  And there had been some talk about how fun it would be to sleep in it.  Wouldn't it be cute if they were headed down there to cuddle up and fall asleep together??  That would be precious.  But was that a chance I was willing to take?  What if they went down there and ended up wrestling and waking up all the way and then wouldn't go back to sleep at all and then I had to get up and stay up with them just to keep them quiet so the rest of the house could sleep?  Not a chance I was willing to take.  So I tip-toeed down the hall after them to walk out to the living room and find them piling their blankets and pillows on the couch to have a sleep over.  It looked like they'd been at it for a while.  I must not have been sleeping so lightly after all.  Katelyn insisted that Ethan had wanted her to go wake him up.  And he did look like a very excited accomplice.  None-the-less, I shewed them off to their beds.  Katie also insisted that she simply wasn't tired anymore- which is pretty unlike her.  She needs her sleep.  But I didn't want to argue about it anymore, so I let her read books with her light on and door closed as long as she stayed quiet.  About 10 minutes later she got up and turned her light off and went back to bed- where she stayed until 8:30- just to make up for lost time.  Ethan slept late too.  Those sleepovers can be a beast.