Cherry Pitting

Last weekend Aunt Tammy brought us back some cherries from Door County. Beautiful, bright red, tart cherries. Perfect for fresh cherry pie... except for one thing: the pits. So I called Matt's mom, the cook, to see if she had a cherry pitter. "No," she said. "I found that you fingernail orks just as well, or a pointy end of a spoon." Well, using my fingers sounded very messy (I had tried that with Bing cherries), and I didn't have a spoon with a narrow pointy handle. But as I was digging through my silverware drawer, I found my Pampered Chef orange pealer (I've only gotten orange pealers from Pampered Chef, so others might be the same way, I don't know) which on the opposite end from the orange pealer side had the perfect end for digging out cherry pits. Perfect. It really was quite easy with the right tool. Note: this works well for tart cherries, not with bing cherries which have a larger pit (I tried). Before the kids woke up from their nap I had 8 cups of cherries pitted. Enough for two pies. So I made two, baked one and froze the other. Yummy!

Fun with Friends

Not long ago my friend LeAnna from Written Windows and her family came to visit us for a few days. LeAnna and her husband are on misionaries on deputation to New Zealand, and they needed a place to hang out in between meetings. We always love having them visit! I was glad they came when they did too because that evening, right at supper time, the tornado siren went off! So down to the very messy basement we all went. This was quite an adventure. First the tornado siren is right next to our house... very loud! Then as I said the basement was quite messy, not just because it's a basement, but because we have pretty much ignored it since we moved in 3 months ago. And don't forget that it's supper time! 4 kids, 3 adults, 1 baby in a messy basement at supper time. Well, as you can see we made it work!
Before they left we were able to go to the park.


They all have so much fun playing together!
Check out that hair!

Camping

A couple of weekends ago we went camping to one of our favorite places to be. The Bible camp where I grew up, where My Man and I met, where My Man proposed, and where my Mother-in-law still works as cook.

We had such a great time! The girls loved sleeping in a tent, fishing, hiking, seeing the horses, and their favorite part... picking the raspberries that were next to our camp site. Actually, we picked a great weekend to go because the raspberries were abundant. I was able to bring home about 7 cups to stick in the freezer to use in Mrs. Sedovic's Raspberry Christmas Pie... YUM! Of course there will be some extra to use in... whatever. I love raspberries! And it seems that Ally has inherited that from me. She spent every moment she could picking berries and popping them in her mouth!Here are the girls helping Daddy set up the tent.

Nana with all her kiddos: RaeRae, Eli, Ally, and Baby Bear

A quiet evening fishing and the camp lake... yeah right... the girls are 3 and 2! But it was fun, and I caught the only fish. A bass, but too small to keep.

Baby Bear all snug for the night in the tent. This is one of the fleece sleeper sacks I made before RaeRae was born. Isn't he so cute in it!

We really had a great time. Hopefully we will be able to go camping again, but for longer than just one night.