What we've been up to

I haven't posted much the past couple weeks. We had a round of stomach flu that seemed to linger for weeks. Thankfully Todd and the twins were spared, but Easton, Evi and I took a week each to get all the way over it. Not fun.

I've been busy with my new calling and learning how to pressure can chicken in my new pressure canner. It's pretty neat, once you get over your fear of poisoning your family with botulism. I overcame that fear by taking my pressure gauge to the county extension office and having them test it to make sure everything was working as it should. There is a lot of satisfaction seeing those jars all lined up, waiting to be used in an emergency. I LOVE feeling prepared. It's a control thing.

Canned chicken chunks. They don't look very appetizing, but everyone I've talked to who's done this before says they taste great once you open them. Here's hoping!

My sister Janece and I even tried our hand at some strawberry jam. After several burnt fingers, a pot overflow, and only setting her burner on fire twice, we were able to come away with 10 small jars each. We're bound and determined to get good at this canning thing. We're going to do beef chunks next, as soon as we can find it on sale for a good price.

We've also built boxes for our square foot gardening veggie garden. To learn more about it, click here. Seems easy enough. We'll see how it goes! We can grow stuff pretty much year round here in Arizona, so I'm excited to learn how! Right now we have tomatoes, cantaloupes, sweet bell peppers, bush beans, cilantro, and basil. We purposely made the boxes small, so we can take them with us when we leave this rental house.

This next week I'll be cleaning my house, which I've been neglecting for the past couple weeks. That will include steaming my carpets, which are starting to smell faintly of old baby formula thanks to Kylie leaving spit-up trails across the front room floor as she rolls around. I'm really hoping she gets over this before she starts crawling. I'm doing laundry at an alarming rate to keep up with her.