Weekend Tidbits

Last Sunday I enjoyed a quiet walk with beautiful views.

The picture doesn't do it justice

Saw a mama deer down in that meadow and she had her baby fawn with her

The sun was gorgeous streaming through the clouds

This weekend I stayed busy in the kitchen, first making a big batch of chicken noodle soup to be frozen for lunches for Charles and then making and canning 11 quarts of chicken stock.  Canning the stock was quite a process, but it will be handy to have on hand for making soups and including in other recipes. (Especially as compared to my last batch of stock, which was frozen and not easy to grab when one fails to play ahead.)

The chicken soup cooling on the counter before going in the freezer, 15 pints

And here's a fun little nugget that has been on the fridge for awhile:

I'm fairly certain this was a Sophie creation

Around the World (the first two weeks)

This summer I am busy teaching children ages 3-6 in an eight week summer program with an "Around the World" theme.  With two weeks under my belt so far, I've learned that teaching the preschool/early elementary set is quite different from middle school.  I'm learning the ropes as I go, and hopefully the kiddos are learning some things along the way too!

Our first week we learned about Oceania, focused mainly on Australia.  We made paper mache globes, boomerangs, Australian aboriginal art, learned Australian games, and made damper bread as our bread of the week.

Paper mache globes drying

Australian damper bread

Last week we focused on Asia, studying the countries of Thailand, Japan, and China.  We read stories, did origami, made Chinese accordion dragons, painted Thai elephants, and ate Japanese melonpan (a Japanese sweet bread with a bread inside and a cookie layer outside).  Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of the bread... they ate it all up!

Thai elephant paintings

I'm enjoying learning new and fun things each day and making cool crafts with the kids.  It hasn't all been easy (especially keeping little ones in line!), but I'm hopeful that it will get smoother as I continue to build relationships with the children.  Stay tuned for future posts about our happenings!

Fathers Day Extravaganza (in LOTS of pictures)

In the land of Charles, Fathers Day lasts for more than just one day.  Here are some photos from this weekend:

Sophie left this banana muffin breakfast for Charles on Saturday

The carnage of 2nd breakfast -- Bakers Dozen donuts

Spent the day trimming and mowing in the yard, as well as weeding the garden

It's tough going up the hill -- might need a new transmission

Spent some time with his laptop in typical fashion

Fathers Day dinner at Wood Grill -- lots of chicken!

Festively wrapped gifts, all ready on Sunday morning

"For you to draw houses on!"

Fathers Day card from Sophie

Hannah's "My Dad and I" book had to be unlocked before reading

Sophie wrapped it herself

Sophie's book was bound with lots of paper clips

Fun stomping the packaging that came in Dad's gift

Yay!  A new chair to replace the old broken one

Don't he look handsome in it?

My favorite page from Hannah's book

Oops!  An extra present...

... and it's a Sophie!

They had fun creating a rocket out of the box

Next was church and HMC potluck at Highland -- complete with snickerdoodle cake

 Hannah playing in the creek and wondering why we aren't hiking yet

So much fun to be had!

On the bridge after our short hike

Happy Fathers Day, Charles!

Strawberry Jam (sans pectin)

Due to my busy schedule this summer, I wasn't sure I'd be able to pick strawberries and make jam.  The girls and I did it for the first time last year (on a rainy, cold morning), and Sophie especially enjoyed having homemade jam to eat all year long.  (Hannah doesn't care for jam, sadly.)

So Tuesday morning the local strawberry picking farm posted that they would have jam days that morning and Wednesday before shutting down for the season.  You have to arrive right when they open at 7:30 if you want a chance to get a decent picking, and since the farm is 40 minutes away and the post came on Facebook at 7am on Tuesday, we decided to get up early Wednesday to go berry picking.

It was a much nicer morning than we experienced last year, and we saw lots of folks we knew while there: some folks from school and some folks from church, too.  We picked for about an hour and ended up with two boxes the size of the one above, which turned out to be about 14lbs of berries.  At $1/lb on jam days, we walked away with quite a bargain!

I spent the rest of the morning washing and capping strawberries.

Sophie helped to crush some of them, which we mixed with a small amount of sugar and then stuck in the refrigerator to macerate overnight.  These became a low-sugar batch of jam that was cooked and processed into ten half-pint jars on Thursday.

Another few berries (some of the nicer looking ones) were flash frozen for later use.  This turned out to be somewhere between 1-2 quarts of frozen berries.

The other larger bulk of berries were made into a traditional jam/preserve using a recipe in the Mary Emma Showalter cookbook.  Last year I made my jam with low-sugar pectin and wasn't happy with the extra firm set that resulted.  This year I wanted a looser jam, so I tried going without pectin on both recipes.  This full sugar preserve set up quite nicely, and I ended up using the immersion blender to make it into a smoother jam (as opposed to the low sugar jam where I left the berries crushed).  In the photos below you can see the mound of 12 cups of sugar that went into the quadruple batch of full sugar preserve, along with the very foamy rolling boil stage of cooking.  This batch made 11 half-pint jars of jam.

And, at Sophie's request, we saved a few berries to eat fresh... because it isn't strawberry picking if you don't have some to eat in the end!  (Although Sophie ate quite a few during as well, her hands were sticky red when we returned from the strawberry field.)

Tree Climbing and Oven Pancakes

Here are a few items from the last couple of days, in no particular order.

On Monday, Grandma kept the girls while I finished up at school with meetings and cleaning out my classroom and closet.  They had to take her car for an oil change and walked to the park by the creek while waiting.  Here are a few fun shots she took while they were hanging out.  All of them are great pictures, but the last one especially makes me smile.

Saturday Hannah came running with me down at the community park.  She ran and walked two miles total (ran 1 and walked 1, alternating by the half mile), which is fantastic.  She's turning into quite the little runner, and I couldn't be more proud of her.  Her gym teacher at school was even impressed with how well she paced herself when running the mile, which they did for the first time this year as 3rd graders.  On our way home, she decided to be a turtle in the grass.

"I'm a turtle!"

I've been able to do a little more cooking this week, to Charles' disappointment, since he doesn't always appreciate my experimenting!  Last night I made a vegetable oven pancake from Simply in Season.  It had asparagus as the vegetable and was interesting and quite tasty.  It poofed up while baking (see photo) but then settles down as it cools a little.

The rest of this week has been devoted to my manic planning for the 8-week summer program I'm teaching (which begins on Monday, 5 weeks of the 8 are planned thus far) and to strawberry jam.  More on the jam tomorrow.

Saturday Happenings

I started my day with a 4-mile run/walk, followed by this week's chore: vacuuming.  I have felt completely unmotivated to vacuum for the last several months, but this morning I was in a groove and wanted to finish even before I had breakfast.  Until the vacuum broke.

We have a central vac (which I love), and it turns on and off automatically when you plug the hose into the outlets in the wall that are scattered throughout the house.  But halfway through vacuuming this morning, the downstairs unit kept running even after I pulled the hose out of the wall.  Uh oh.  Looks like we're going to have to get someone in here to look at what might be wrong.

Later the girls and I walked with Grandma to the opening of the farmer's market, which was disappointing to say the least.  The produce vendor that has been there the last couple of years bowed out for this season, so there was no fresh produce.  Produce is THE reason I go to the farmer's market since I don't need baked goods, meat, donuts, crafts, etc.  Guess I won't be going much this year.

We did walk across the new pedestrian bridge on our way there though, which was the first time for the girls.  They thought it was very cool.

Charles picked up two free chicken halves from a new guy in town who is doing barbecue in the parking lot of the nursery on Main Street.  They were giving away halves today to try to drum up new business and make folks aware of them.  We had them for lunch, and they were very tasty.  Good flavor, very tender and moist.  Sophie especially enjoyed hers (eating almost an entire half herself, minus the breast that she allowed me to have), and Hannah enjoyed her favorite of late: a toasted mini bagel sandwich (alternating between cream cheese, peanut butter, Nutella, or some combination of those three as a filling).

Charles also took the girls to the library.  The girls and I went just yesterday, but each had already read their books and were ready for new ones.  Mind you, they are both reading chapter books now, and they are clearly whipping through them.  Next week we can sign them up for the summer reading program so they can earn library bucks for prizes for their reading.  Sophie snuggled up with a bear while they were there.

While they were at the library, I was testing a recipe for Japanese melonpan (melon bread) that I want to make for the summer program when we study Asia.  It is an interesting sweet bread that is a ball of regular soft bread (not sweet) coated with a cookie topping that gets crispy when baked, while the center is soft like regular bread.  I wanted to try them at home before I tried them with the kiddos at school, and I think they turned out quite yummy, though they don't really look like they're supposed to (I googled them after finishing, rather than before).

Sophie had a time out in her room when they returned from the library, and when she came out she was sporting this sign on her chest:

Quite the face, isn't it?  She was a little pouty about her time out, but she snapped out of it before too long and was happily chattering away again.  Later in the afternoon the girls enjoyed a swim in the pool; it's warming up nicely at around 86 degrees already.  I'll wait until it's a few degrees warmer before I get in though!

Early Morning Beauty

My workout time is typically from 5:30-6:00am each morning.  I love the summer because during that time frame it's already light and warm enough to be outside.  Neither of these things are true in the winter.  I also like that most of the world is still asleep at this hour of the morning, so I can venture outdoors and have quiet, peaceful time to rejuvenate my soul while I am exercising my body.

The other morning the park where I sometimes run was blanketed in a lovely layer of low-lying fog.  The pictures do not do it justice.

These were taken just after 5:30 and by 6am when I was heading home, most of the fog had lifted already.  It was beautiful while it lasted though.

My plan for this summer's workouts is to do living room circuit training for strength on M/W/F and venture outdoors for a run on T/Th/Sa.  Sunday will be an active rest day.  I mentioned to Charles that he should get up at 5:30 on the days I'm working out at home and go for an early morning walk.  So far he's doing well, and has a week's worth of M/W/F walks completed.  My hope is that he will embrace the quiet morning exercise time also.