Hitting Back? by Jen

The other day Brooke and Mikaya had a little scuffle in which Mikaya hit Brooke and Brooke proceeded to hit Mikaya back.

Me being the big sister and seeing the whole thing decided to step in. I said "Brooke! That wasn't very kind to hit her back!" I was about to passionately (maybe a little bit to passionately) launch into a speech about how since she is the bigger sister she should be the good example when Brooke blurted out (in a loud whiny tone) "I didn't hit her back.... I hit her FRONT!"

Ummmm........I didn't know what to say!

Lil' sis

Megan took these AMAZING pictures of herself the other day.

For some reason she didn't want to post them on her blog.......

I thought they were to good to pass up :)

Our Saturday by Jen

As some of you might have guessed, mom has been somewhat absent for the last week.... busy with harvest (we are so thankful for amazing weather that we have had this week. We were able to get a lot of harvesting done). It is this time of year that every able bodied person is kept busy as we work to get the crops and the gardens harvested.

So we (Jen, Meg and Kerri) decided that we would take pictures of our day and let you peek into "Jen, Megan & Kerri's" Day"

WARNING: This is a really long post.

We didn't mean for it to happen this way but it turned out to be the busiest day of the week!

Our day started at around 8:00 a.m. Usually we ride at 6:00 but this morning we gave the horses a break didn't wake up on time.

Milking comes first, two of us girls milk while the other stays inside and feeds the kids.

We like to do our work while listening and singing to music. Makes the day go by much faster

Here are the girls..... singing

We like to have brunch on Saturday mornings. But when everyone is in the field it's hard to do that. So if they couldn't come to brunch, we decided to bring brunch to them!

For brunch this morning we decided to make cinnamon buns!

Let the yummy kitchen mess begin :)

We worked on the cinnamon buns (and other morning chores) till 12:00

Mikaya enjoying her "lunch"

And then it was off to deliver the sticky yummies and also some passengers to the field.

Caleb, Zachary and Brooke went along with Dad for a while.

Here is Dad in the combine.

On our way to Mom

This is what Mom has been doing for the last couple of days.

Here she is swathing our last field of wheat.

Mom had Jesse and Nathan with her.

Meanwhile the guys had moved to another field and needed a bin to be cleaned out.

We arrived there at.....

Inside the bin.

Yes, it really is this dusty!

I think we made a record cleaning out a bin we were done in 13 minutes :)

Next on the list was to take the garbage to the dump.

We finally arrived home....

Meanwhile Megan was at home making relish. Through some miscommunication she ended up making 4 batches instead of 2.... anyone need some relish?!? Or maybe you have some ideas of creative ways to use relish.....PLEASE?

Here's Megan working hard making sweet relish x4

this is NOT even all of it :)

Mikaya was lost with all her siblings (except Josiah) in the field. She didn't quite know what to do with herself. When your in a large family there is always someone to play with!

Josiah and Mikaya watching a video

On coming home we started finishing up some apple juice that had been sitting in water overnight. The relish was supposed to sit for the day.

Here are the apples boiling.

And the mess gets bigger!

Sometime after making the apple juice I fed the horses, Meg made supper. Then Mom finished the field so she came home and I gave her a ride to Dad. I then brought Brooke, Caleb and Nathan home.

At.....

And no matter how busy we are here the crew in the field still gets hungry :) So.......

We brought supper to the field.

To Josh and Rebecca.....

Grandpa....

And Mom and Dad......

The boys ate on the truck while Mom and Dad ate while on the move.

Here is Josiah and Kerri waiting for Mom and Dad to finish eating. Then it would be Josiah's turn.

And then Joey got his first combine ride! (outside of mom :)

Again arriving home....

Mikaya decided that today would be a good day to style her hair.....

By this time the apple juice was ready to be put into jars.

As well as the relish...... but we ran into a problem...... When it came time to add the peppers we found that...

we didn't have a pot big enough to fit it all (and believe me, we have a really big pot!)

As you can see the mess was still growing!

We finally found something big enough to fit ALL the relish in.

But we didn't find enough cupboard space....

As I was canning I found that the fridge needed immediate attention.... so I did that

We were thankful that Caleb came home from the field....

he entertained Josiah while we were busy.

We FINALLY had the time to do the dishes! It took a long time to get them all finished. ps though by appearances it may seem like we have a dishwasher and dishes are no big deal.....it's not working right now, so it's all by hand:)

Josiah thought it was about time!

We got all the kids bathed, did the evening milking, cleaned the house, washed the kitchen floor, did some wash and then we were done! Whew, all in a day's work....

We never were able to get a picture of the clean kitchen but here is the result of some of our work....

Friday and Saturday together we have made 39 jars of apple juice.

And 33 jars of relish

It was a full day and there is a couple of things we learned

1. Never make relish and apple juice the same day. The smells of the two mixed together is HORRIBLE.

2. Communication is VERY important :)

3. Never quadruple a relish recipe. You will end up with 33 jars of relish....

4. We love our life and wouldn't have it any other way!!

Time for bed after a long day.