Newport

Sometimes, you just need to get away for a little while, so that's what we did. We spent the weekend down in Newport, OR. We love Newport!

We love to go to the lighthouse. This is the Yaquina Bay lighthouse. We ended up at the park just in time for the "Twilight Tour." In other words, they let us climb up to the top of the lighthouse. It was fun...lots of stairs though so we definitely got our workout!

We love to go for walks on the beach...

although it typically leads to lots of sand in the shoes (nice picture, thanks Eddie).

We love to take pictures of the bridge (it's a cool bridge) and watch the boats.

And we love to watch the sunsets on the beach.

I love that there are outlet stores in Lincoln City (no sales tax!!), we both enjoy nosing around through antique stores, and then there's the Christmas Cottage. Christmas all year round...what's not to love?

But mostly, we just like to spend time together...

Boy, taking a picture of ourselves is difficult.

Hmm, that's not right yet...

Nope, that's definitely not the picture we want to remember...

Let's see if Eddie can do any better with the camera (wow, what's that worried expression for?)

Ah heck, it's so much easier when you just ask for help from someone else sometimes!

Peaches and Strawberries and Jam, Oh My!

I've been making jam and canning fruit with my mom for years. She taught me how to prepare the fruit and the jars and we have canned peaches, pears, applesauce, pear-sauce, strawberry jam, raspberry jam, apricot-pineapple jam, tomatoes, salsa and a whole list of other things!

I've made freezer jam on my own before (it's really hard to screw up freezer jam) but I had never canned peaches before or made cooked jam without my mom right there. Well, Eddie and I have tried to bulk up our food storage and truly heed the prophets' advice to be prepared, so when the e-mail came through our Ward Cannery Specialist that we could get a 25-pound box of peaches for $12, yeah, we bought 3 boxes for us and one for a friend. Then Monday night after work, we started canning peaches...at 7PM. A bit crazy, yes. In fact, we were still canning until after 1AM and yes, I had to work the next day!

But it was so much fun! My friend had never made jam or canned anything so it was an adventure for the both of us! We started with her box of peaches; cleaned them, blanched them, peeled them, pitted and sliced them, then stuffed them in jars. We made some simple syrup for the jars, cleaned the tops, sterilized the lids and sealed them all in the canner on the stove top. A long process, but definitely worth it; check out the yield just from one box (aren't they just pretty??):

Ok, so after canning a couple of boxes, we moved on to freezer jam. By this time, it was after 11PM and we were getting a bit silly, but again, hard to screw up freezer jam. We again cleaned, blanched, peeled, pitted, and sliced the box of peaches. Next came blending them a bit so they were smaller chunks. From there, all you do is add the pectin and sugar (in this case, we added some peach Jell-O too to help the jam set) and funnel the jam into the jars. I tried a little bit in the bottom of the bowl when we were done - SO YUMMY! I can't wait for that first peanut butter and jam sandwich, or waffles, or pork roast (yup, peach or apricot jam - along with a few other spices - makes for a tasty pork glaze)...

As for the strawberries, well, they've been in the freezer since I bought huge buckets of them last year. I finally got around to making something out of them. Eddie and I decided to try cooked jam this time so we didn't have to occupy valuable freezer space. Also, you never know, in case of a disaster, there may not be power so everything in the freezer would just go to waste anyway. We canned the cooked jam using the inverted preservation method - you know, it's where you boil the jam, put it in the jars, tighten the lid on them and turn them upside down to seal them. Worked like a charm and now we have 18 or so jars of strawberry jam!!

Isn't canning fun?!

Ode To My Father

I think about my father quite often. I miss him terribly. My thoughts of him are especially surface today though. He passed away two years ago today.

I remember receiving the cell phone call that Tuesday from my brother telling me that dad was being taken to the hospital. I almost didn't answer the call even because I was in the middle of something at work, but really, Matt doesn't call me that often so I picked up the phone. My dad, he'd had other hospital trips earlier in the year because of his heart, each visit more serious than the last, as the doctors had to take more aggressive steps each time to get his heart back to normal rhythm. While still scary, I honestly thought that this would be like previous trips - we'd go to the hospital and they would make him better and we'd all go home.

I remember driving so quickly to the hospital, I wasn't even sure it was the right hospital, but my family usually always goes to the same one. I was the closest; I dropped everything at work, told my manager I was leaving, ran to my car and raced to the hospital. I was praying the entire way, driving way too fast, calling my husband on the way and illegally using the carpool lane (almost hoping to be pulled over because maybe they'd escort me to the hospital then). When I was within a block of the hospital, they tried to stop me because of some construction, but I ran the red light and disobeyed the flagger anyway. I really just didn't care at that point.

I was the first to arrive at the hospital, I even beat the ambulance there. I ran into the ER waiting room and asked about my dad; they said he wasn't there and then after probing, I learned that there was an ambulance on the way there.

My brother, Matt, was the next to arrive - he tried to get more information from the ER, but they were truly less than helpful. Finally, we saw an ambulance pulling in; it said Fire District 7 so we knew it was the right one. I remember them opening up the back of the ambulance and seeing my dad, fully alert, having a hard time breathing though so he had an oxygen mask on. I greeted him and recall not wanting to tell him I love him because that would be final and this was not going to be final. They'd just rebuilt the ER there and the ambulatory entrance was now coded. They typed in the code, but the doors wouldn't open. Typed in the code again, but again, the doors wouldn't open. I remember knocking on the doors as they tried to open the doors for a third and fourth time, all the while, my dad was on the gurney trying to catch his breath. I was so angry.

Family started arriving one by one and they took us to a private family waiting area where a counselor would come in and explain what was happening. We kept hearing "Code Blue" over the intercom and the counselor explained that it was a call for more help. Finally, she allowed one family member to go see him. We all agreed it would be Melissa, since she's the doctor and would understand the most about what was happening. We kept asking if we could get my husband and Melissa's boyfriend back there to give my dad a Priesthood blessing, but they wouldn't allow it. I can't imagine what Melissa went through as she went back to see my dad. Right before she left, we said a family prayer - how I was nominated to say it, I don't know. All I remember about it was asking that he would be ok but acknowledging that the Lord's will be done.

After Melissa came back, it was evident that he was in really bad condition. They told us that they couldn't get any air to him because his airways had collapsed. The next thing I knew they told us we could all go back to his room and tell him good-bye; that he would likely still hear that if we hurried. They pronounced him dead at 12:46PM on August 14, 2007.

I love and miss my father so much! I know we are sealed together as a family and will see him again, but that doesn't make me miss him any less. I learned so much from my father. Through his example, he taught me of kindness, humor, charity, gospel principles, unconditional love, to always challenge myself, to know that I could do anything, not to settle and that if I waited long enough, I would eventually be big enough to get back at Matt for teasing me when I was little.

Matt put together a slide show of pictures set to music. To this day, I have a difficult time whenever I hear the song, "100 years."

I love you, Dad.

Garden Galore!

One of the things I love about summer is gardening; not flowers, vegetables! This has been an exceptional year for our vegetable garden. I think the record temperatures helped! We've been able to grow vegetables that last year failed miserably! It helps that we haven't had to deal with the slug problems like last year; I think the heat wave helped with that too.

I know we've not been able to grow green peppers in past years and just look at how cute these little guys are!!

Tomatoes! Lots of tomatoes! Not that Eddie and I like to eat them, but we do like tomato sauce, Mexican rice, and fresh salsa!!

Corn! We have corn! Now, we did get some corn a couple of years ago, but it was not edible. This corn shot up over TWO FEET just during that week we had the hot, hot temperatures! We've got about two ears per stalk; three stalks.

Potatoes! We planted these so long ago, I don't even remember which variety of potato these are! I guess that will be half the fun when we dig them up then.

Pumpkins! Last year we had enough to carve FOUR huge jack-o-lanterns. Then we cut apart the pumpkins, cooked in the microwave for a few minutes, scraped the 'meat' of the pumpkins into a bowl and pureed it. Then we put the puree into Food Saver bags and have fresh pumpkin in the freezer for pumpkin bread, pie, cakes, cookies, and whatever other yummies we can think of!

Peas - these are just beginning to flower so we should have some snap peas in the next couple of weeks. The down side to snap peas is that they only harvest one time so you have to plant lots of them!

Raspberries! We just planted these at the end of the season last year. We've only had a few berries so far, but lots of flowers are beginning to form! The challenge here will be to get these plants under control so they don't take over the yard!

Jalapenos!!! We have the cutest jalapeno peppers growing! We've NEVER gotten jalapeno peppers to grow. That salsa is sounding really good right now...

Broccoli - it's amazing how huge the plant is for such a small crown and it's only good for one harvest! Oh well, Eddie loves broccoli!!

Zucchini - we've learned, you really only need ONE zucchini plant. Yeah, we have FOUR! Lots of zucchini bread, stir fry, and pizza toppings in our future!

Cucumbers - these are the tastiest cucumbers we've ever grown! They're the miniature variety so they're each only about 5" - 6". We love cucumbers and more are just waiting on the vine...

We have some herbs growing as well - anyone need any basil or oregano?? Next year, I think we'll make more room for lettuce and onions. We got a few onions this year and they were so yummy; well, I thought so anyway, Eddie's not into onions so much, go figure!

At any rate, vegetables out of the garden taste so much better and force a bit of a challenge on us when it comes to fixing dinner (can't let all of these beauties go to waste)! It's great!!