My newest Video of our group Motorcycle Ride to Winthrop, WA

From Blueberry pie and Ashlynd809

This is Ashlynd my granddaughter and we had her visit us last night and she loves having her picture taken. Heather and I had a lot of fun with her. Heather loves to do her hair and she says she likes to look like a girl.

We also made blueberry jam and blueberry pie. The pie was real easy and very good. The jam was more time consuming and 6 hardened up and 6 are a little runny. We processed them at the same time. I guess we will just have blueberry syrup. We really enjoyed the blackberry syrup.

Our Chickens

The Finished Chicken Coop!

We finally got the last few things done on the chicken coop and I think they are living in the lap of luxury (for chickens that is). We ended up with four hens and one rooster. Hopefully some day soon we will actually get eggs. We decided to have chickens for the purpose of farm fresh eggs. I let them out everyday for free range time and Nana takes care of the feeding and watering. Cody will be in charge of egg collecting as soon as it arrives.

The Kids Got to Go to the ZOO

Grandma Sandy and Grandpa Mike took Mason and Cody to the Woodland Park Zoo. They had so much fun. The were joined by their Aunt Krisha, Uncle Rich and Cousin Sydney. Mason's favorite part was the drums in the African Exhibit and Cody said he just loved the whole thing. He had so much fun hanging out with his little cousin.

We got to go on an great Motorcycle Ride to Wintrop, WA

Todd and I, along with 7 other people got to take a beautiful ride over HWY 20 to Winthrop, WA. It is the longest ride to date that I have done on my motorcycle. It was so much fun and what beautiful scenery. Here is all the bikes at one of the stops we had to stretch our legs. It was a total of seven bikes and 9 riders.

Blackberries..From the bush to jam, syrup and PIE!!

Todd and I got inspired to pick blackberries so we could have blackberry pie. It is one of our favorites and Mom makes a mean pie. We then decided maybe we should pick enough to make jam since we have the supplies and that is exactly what we did. After about an hour of picking with some help from the kids we ended up with enough blackberries to make 10 jars of jam, one blackberry pie and two jars of blackberry syrup. We had so much fun making everything and can't wait to have pancakes with our freshly made syrup. So far the canning is going well for us. I think next its going to be applesauce because everyone we know has apple trees.

The pie turned out delicious and mom found the recipe here at http://www.grouprecipes.com/28126/blackberry-pie.html . We had it warm with vanilla ice cream last night and today it has set and is nice and firm. Usually we end up with runny pie so it is great that it stayed together.

The Pickled Beans are DELICIOUS

We popped open a jar of the pickled beans last night and they were yummy. They were crisp and flavorful. I am so glad they turned out because we have a lot of jars of them. I think they will be fabulous as a salad with corn and peppers. It feels so good to can our own food. I know the pickled beans are just the beginning. We used the recipe I found here http://www.pickyourown.org/greenbeans_pickled.htm and the only thing we did different was use 1/2 apple cider vinegar and 1/2 white vinegar. This inspires me to try all different kinds of things and I am going to have so much fun making labels.

Family BBQ at Jim and Darlenes

Everyone got together at Jim and Darlene's to say good bye and Good Luck to Joe, Michelle and Natalie. They are moving to the east coast. We had a wonderful time seeing everyone and Jim and Darlene put out an awesome spread. They had BBQ Ribs, Salmon, Hot Dogs, Salads, Corn and yummy fruit. I let Mason and Cody have the camera so I got lots of great pictures of everyone. I love the different angles that the kids get when they take pictures. They also get much better smiles then I do. Natalie was a sweet heart and made great glitter pictures for everyone.

BEANS! I canned beans for the first time

Our wonderful friend dropped off 3 big buckets of beans, actually it was two buckets and a bag, but alot all the same. So mom and I found a great recipe for pickled beans and got all of the ingredients this morning. I am not sure if I even like pickled beans but it seem like a good idea to give it a try. We ended up with 6 large cans and 6 medium cans of beans. It was a lot of fun. The longest part was waiting for the dishwasher to finish sanitizing the jars. I was surprised at the amount of vinegar it took but thankfully we had two big jugs. We have to wait a couple of days before we can try them and I just can't wait. Next we are going to do blackberry jam. YUMMY!

I am so excited about all of this because we are working very hard at become a greener and more self sufficient family. It just feels like this is a step in the right direction.,

What an incredible Fort to have!

Here is a picture of this awesome fort my brothers built in the woods by the river. They used all kinds of trees and wood that was lying around to create this incredible structure. It is so beautiful and blends so well with its environment. They said they were very inspired by Robinhood so they might be creating more platforms on top of it. It is so sturdy and they just weaved the branches in and out of each other. I just love it.

Gardening

Gardening is fun but I can not seem to get those beautiful vegetables that other people have. My friend brings me the most beautiful vegetables. They are big and green and delicious. I want a garden like that. I keep adding things to my dirt and composting but it is only helping a little. At times I get discouraged and go to buy instead.I want to be able to feed the family cheaper but it is not working out that way. Heather bought me a caner and now I need to find some vegetables to can. I have tomatoes but not enough to can.

My chickens are doing great but no eggs yet. I keep looking for the eggs and talking to the hens, but to no avail yet. We ended up with another rooster. Out of 14 chickens I am down to 4 hens, all the rest were roosters.

Transformers Rock Cody's World

Cody loves his transformers. He is so amazing with them. He opens a box and just goes to town transforming them. I think that most of them are really hard to maneuver but he seems to instantly know how to do it. Its just amazing. He got a ton of new ones for his birthday and he just keeps playing with them. He creates whole scenes and can imagine for hours. He makes me so happy that he plays with them by himself and seems to really enjoy it.

Family Trip to Silver Lake Washington

Todd, Mason, Cody and I rented a great cabin at Silver Lake. We were in Cabin #2 and it had a wonderful view of the lake, two bedrooms, deck and a kitchen. We had the most fun playing ball out in the front yard. We also took a fun ride on the paddle boat and boy was that a lot more work then it looked like. We have all agreed we can't wait to do it again.

Truck Ride Into the Mountains

Our Trip to the Northwest Washington Fair 2009

Todd and I took the boys to the fair when they were really little but they don't remember so they were pretty excited about this trip. They were both almost big enough to go on all the rides and they loved all the carnival games. I think we left with 2 stuffed animals and about 5 key chains. We were lucky enough to meet up with our friends at the carnival and then we even ran into a friend from school who went on a few rides with us. The boys have big plans to save their money so they can spend a ton more next year.