We're Jammin!

Last Thursday and Friday, Mom, Nicole and I got together to restore the old fashioned tradition of making homemade jam. Not just any jam though.. Our famous Apricot Freezer Jam. Everybody who tastes this jam, loves it, so we were determined to make enough to last until next season. Last year, the jam was made from the apricots that grew on my tree in the backyard. Unfortunately no apricots grew this year, so we had to venture elsewhere. 10 hrs of hard labor (and i mean, HARD LABOR), 6 trips to the store for forgotten supplies, lots of dollar bills spent and we had finally accomplished our goal. A year supply of Apricot Freezer Jam. Wahoo!

We even had to get an extra freezer to fit it all!

GOT CHICKENS?? We Do!

A few months ago we were sitting around with Jim's family chatting about preparing ourselves for the end of the world... Among many other tactics of self sufficiency and survival that were discussed, "chickens" caught Jimmy's interest and led to what we have now. After much contemplation of whether to get baby chicks, or just go for the chickens, we decided to pay a little more and have the work done for us...

Here is our chicken coop that we built using Max and Chloe's dog house.. sorry guys!

Now meet our chickens:

This is Granny, she was given to us just a few days ago by our neighbors.. she's getting pretty old and they had too many chickens i guess.. she is the only one old enough to lay eggs right now...

The Next two are named Frita and Frango (translated in Portuguese that means "Fried" and "Chicken") hee hee

We just refer to the others as the Jackson four.. I think you can guess why...

We were told this one might be a rooster.. don't tell anyone cause rooster's aren't allowed in Orem. Woops!

This afternoon i went out to take care of the Little flock and found a Little surprise..

Our first official egg

It's a bit smaller than a store bought egg, but we'll take what we can get!

Happy Birthday Julie!

Your only request was for us to post more pictures of Benson for you, so here you go!

Happy Sweet Sixteen!

Gardening 101

We decided to start a garden...

a little late in the season I know,

but better late than never!

Benson joined us between naps

Planting our seedlings!

Watching them grow

Knife to the finger!

There are 7 stitches on my knuckle underneath the purple stuff.

So, let me explain... Actually, typing the last sentence took me 2 minutes, so i'll just let you use your imagination. :)

Remembering Our Max

After a wonderful life of 11 years, we had to make the difficult decision of letting our Max go. The last two weeks have been very hard to watch our beloved boxer get so old and sick so fast.

After realizing we had done everything we could to keep him with us, we decided to let him be free! We now imagine him running and jumping all over the grassy hills in doggy heaven! :)

Benson's First Crawl!

Benson must have been inspired by all the wonderful conference talks... he went from not being able to move from one spot, to crawling all over the room in minutes! Sooooo fun!