A Canning Fiasco

Dear Mom and Dad,

Thanks for the great and probably expensive education you gave me. I find that the hours I poured into those degrees make me entirely ill-equipped to handle raising and storing my own food. I am underqualified for this task and my husband's "alternative mix" on i tunes blasting in the background is not going to save me from my certain and inescapable fate.

Surely, three cans of tomato sauce would not be hard to "put up" so they say in the biz. I scoffed at the tomato, but the tomato has beaten me. It's squishy squishiness has demolished any last hope I had of surviving on my own in the wilderness. After 3 hours of back breaking, juice splattering madness I give you the fruit of my wild-aspiration-wielding labor:


Yeah, there are three of them, and yes, that means 1 hour a jar. Will they taste better than the one I could buy for $1. 86 at Winco? Probably not. Will they even seal overnight while I find my dreams flush with slimy peels and spurting seeds? Probably not.

Consider this my lesson learned. Please send Ragu.

Love,

Your daughter

Now that's a Belly

Reading my current favorite book. I have already read this with mommy 12 times today. So, it is not mommy's favorite book.





As you can see, I also feel very serious about Cats A to Z.

Vacation Recovery

My mom came up this weekend to watch Bryce while we did something for our anniversary (which we had forgotten about) and to keep him occupied while Andrew and I try to recover from our major lack of vacation sleep.


Getting a ride (my mom is for sure doing all the work on this one, but he did "push" her around on it which really makes him laugh).



The neighbor is running a VERY interesting leaf blower.



The face he still makes when he thinks he's supposed to be smiling. Now all our pictures look like this.

More Beach

Digging a hole with papa.




Beach boy hair.



Knocking down daddy's castle.

Little Beach Buds

Today my buddy Garrett came to the beach and he was pretty shy about the sand at first (I am used to the beach by now) but eventually we played in the sand.




I think we brought these chairs to the beach for the parents but the boys had other ideas. Bryce actually pulled Andrew out of his for this one.



Hey, why is he trying to take the ball away?

(my camera was a little hazy from the salt water)

The Beach!

We made it.



Playing with cousin Levi. (nicely at this point)


Levi and papa.


Testing out the surf with my daddy.




"The fever's gone, let's go!"

(this is from a surf movie, Bryce does not have a fever)

Spoon Training

The road to self reliance is fraught with yogurt-flavored obstacles.