Carlyn

pearl eating hummus from the pita house at her layton great grandmother's 80th bday party

luther painting eating corn at Black Bear Jamboree Cabin where we stayed in Aug to celebrate james' grandmother's 80th bday Luther is his "Big Boy Bed" we moved him into a twin bed about a month ago and he has been doing great!!! he has never even gotten out of bed when he is suppose to be sleeping. when he wakes up he crawls to the end of his bed and knocks on his door and calls for us.

so my camera has been broken for about 2 months now. but it took me about that long to figure out it was actually broken. i just kept thinking the batteries were not charged. i am missing all kinds of milestones and photo opportunities. i have picked it up 100 times to take a pic and when i turn it on, if goes off before i even get it up to take the picture. i haven't been able to video pearl's cute little toddle or how she walks around with a cell phone in one hand and a pink purse in the other mostly all of the time. luther did about 20 laps around the park on his tricycle today. that would have made a good pic or video. so, i do have a camera that is working that Brittany gave me a while back, but i lost it's charger. so i guess i am just going to have to get a charger for it. luther has been on a roll lately of saying some really hilarious stuff. i forget a lot of it, but he definitely keeps us laughing. lets see if i can remember a few. he had a bad dream in ...

well, pearl has been taking little steps here and there for over a month, but today she walked half way across the room to me. so i guess i can say she is officially walking. i have been potty training luther for about a month now. and he has now gone several days in a row without an accident so i guess i can say he is potty trained. i have a 1 year old and a 2 year old!!! that sound so weird to say. luther bday is coming up soon in oct, so he will not be 2 much longer. he is already planning his party. i think i am going to let him plan everything since he had some really creative suggestions for pearl party. it will be fun to see what he comes up with. james is enjoying anesthesia. he has a whole month with no call nights, as he got adjusted to his new job. but, now he will start back call. it looks like he will have it only about 3 times a month and before it was about 6. so that is better. he still seem so exhausted even with this month off of call. he has to get up ...

sitting forward in her new car seat and trying to ride her brother's tricycle cakes i made for her birthday party pearl's birthday party went well. we had lots of family and some friends come for the big event. pearl did pretty good with all of the attention for little gal that is really not that social. i had to take her back to her bedroom a few time for a little alone time with mommy so calm her down a little. but, by the end of the day she had gotten use to having a ton of people in her house and face and decided that she loved it. the williams came down fore the event and brittany ( http://www.photographyhonestly.com/ )took lots of pictures at the party, which freed me up to socialize, serve cake and be mommy. i know she got some great shots and i am so grateful because i think i only took like 4 or 5 pictures. so birthday pics will be posted later but everyone kept asking about the cake. so here is the cake i made for her party. it was my first try at fondant. i learne...

i made blueberry jelly from some of the fresh blueberries we picked at meemaw's house pearl eating figs!! luther enjoying a homemade fruit roll up ( fruit leather) that i made in the food dehydrator with pureed blueberries and apple sauce so we planted a huge garden this year and it has been keeping me busy along with our fig tree and blueberries from my meemaw's house. i also have been on a huge sewing kick. so the next few posts are to show everyone some of what has been going on at our house over the last 2 weeks. i didn't have any pictures of all of the squash preservation.

spaghetti sauce!! gotta use some of those fresh tomatoes to make a tomato pie!! diced tomatoes to be frozen.. these will be perfect for soups and stews in the winter!! and i had to try our the dehydrator on the tomatoes!! sundried tomatoes are packed with flavor.

peeled seeded(i keep the tomato juice to freeze) cut in half at this point then i have lots of options. so far i have used my tomatoes to can salsa and spaghetti sauce and to freeze diced tomatoes.

fresh picked tomatoes from our garden cored blanched ice bath

so last year at this time we had just moved into our house, i was over 9 months pregnant and all of the sudden we had a fig tree with massive amounts of ripe figs. we really didn't know what to do with them. i had several failed cooking experiments. mom came and made a batch of fig jam and fig preserves. we ate as many at we coud. james made some homemade fig ice cream that was pretty good. but we had lots go to waste. so this year i was prepared!! i borrowed my meemaw's food dehydrator!! now i can turn 3 huge bowls full of figs into one bag of dried figs!! there are so may recipes out there for dried figs and they are just good eats!! i am also freezing some fresh for use in smoothies and i will be canning some this week. and of course we are eating plenty!! pearl alone has been eating about 30 or more a day. she is a lover of figs!! she get so excited when she sees them. she likes to eat them with breakfast, lunch and dinner. an she likes to snack on some...

this one was made from an old towel i found at the cabin. it was so old and soft i knew it would me a great diaper it is a pocket diaper, so i made some soaker pads to match that go inside of it here are 6 different ones that were not in the wash at he moment. all 3 on top are from the old towels and the 3 on the bottom are flannel. the first flannel is an old receiving blanket. the other two i got the flannel off clearance at walmart. the flannel ones have an extra inner layer. those layers are made from an old jersey sheet. all 10 diapers i have made so far cost less than $10 total and that includes the thread, elastic and all fabric and i have plenty of stuff to do more!!