Salsa and other stuff.

Happy 50th Birthday to Eric! We spent his day making Salsa and drying apples. And obviously from the pile of dishes behind him, washing dishes. That was my job.

Eric and I both took a day off from work and we stayed home and made salsa. When it was all said and done we had 28 pints of medium salsa and 28 pints of hot salsa. The hot isn't really that hot, but since it is the one that we put the ceyenne peppers in we called it hot. Both are very good and I am glad to have salsa back in my food storage. The only bad part was we had to buy tomatos. We had tomotos in our garden, but when the bulk of them were ripe the peppers weren't ready and then we had a couple of hard freezes so our tomatos were not good.  We have also been drying a lot of apples. We dried pears too this year and they are yummy. We canned apple pie filling and Eric canned a few quarts of pears. (Bless his heart). That was one of the chores he gave himself on one of his Fridays off. He found out it wasn't very much fun to can stuff alone and so he only did enough pears for 3 quarts.  Here are some pictures of the salsa.



I love the color and texture of fresh salsa. I wish I could also post the wonderful aroma that was coming from this pot.



Going to Philly!

Paige, Leslie and I are flying to Philly tomorrow to hang out with Bailey, Chad and the new baby..if he ever gets here! I am excited to fly with Paige and Leslie. This will be their first time on an airplane. I hope Leslie does well, and if not, I hope the other passengers are patient.

What a blessing it has been to me to have a student teacher! Taleea is wonderful. She is doing a super job and is a natural at teaching and discerning student needs. She has the lesson plans written and ready to go and will be teaching the class while I am gone. That relieves so much stress for me. I still had to get a substitue, but her job will be to help Taleea. It will be the easiest sub job she has ever had.

I hope the next time I post something here it will include pictures of new little baby boy Clark. I think his name is going to be Miles Chad Clark, but Bailey said not to embroirdery it on anything because they want to see him first before they settle on a name for sure.

Bon Voyage!

Our First Honey Harvest!

On Labor Day we harvested our honey for the first time. It was exciting and we had no idea what to expect. Paige, Brent and Leslie came over  to help. Miranda also had some friends over that were intereted in seeing the process. I worried that it would take a long time and we would be up half the night doing honey and I would have to get up and go to school the next day. That is not the case. Eric started getting into the hives around 10 am and we were done with the extracting and filtering by 3 pm. And that was with a lunch break.

Here are a few pictures that we took to document the day.  

The Bee Whisperers - Getting ready for the harvest.

Eric, Brent and Frankie

Eric very carefully brushing the bees off of the frame.

Paige enjoying some honeycomb. This was before we had to go inside because of angy bees.

                                                            



 

Some capped honey about to go under the heated knife.

Leslie really liked to dip her finger in the honey. She thought it was tastey!



Honey pouring out of the extractor and into the first filter.



The final filtering of the honey.

I am not sure if my kitchen floor will ever be the same.
We mopped it twice the day we harvested and I still find sticky spots.

We are enjoying the honey and have sold much of it. 







Spring Break 2011

We are on spring break this week. The week sure has gone by fast. Paige and Brent were on break last week so they were here in Idaho Falls visiting. When they went back to Wendell, Abby went with them. Eric had to work so mostly it was just Miranda and I  home doing our thing. It felt good to have a week to just chill. I did have a few goals to accomplish over the break. 1. Clean my bedroom. It was really out of control with laundry and ironing. 2. Buy a new car  3. finish Mirnada's senior quilt  4. Go to the temple. Sad to say I only accomplished two out of the four....

Here are some pictures of our trip to Wendell. We got out and did some sight seeing around the area. It was a very lovely day; lots of sunshine and heat!

 Our first stop was one of the many fish hatcheries. This one had a pretty cool viewing pond that you could look from the top or through  glass from below the pond.

 This is a very big sturgeon.

 This is a very cute girl!

 Four beautiful girls sitting on green grass, in front of blooming daffodils. The sun in shinning!

 Second stop, a hot springs swimming area that has alligators on the premises.

 Apparently it is a lucrative business to raise alligators in the Hagerman area. Lots of fish farms that provide fish guts to feed the gators.

Third stop the state fish hatchery. I thought these were large gold fish. Eric assured me that they are golden trout.

 Getting a good view of the trout tanks.

 Another alligator farm. We spotted at least six gators in this fenced in area.

 Next stop, Filer High School. There was track meet going on. We wanted to say Hi to DJR.  

Now I know why I try to control the camera. I let Eric use it for a minute and I end up in a picture. I hate to be reminded of how old and frumpy I look.  Miranda, Abby and Me in front of Shoshone Falls.





 Shoshone Falls near Twin Falls Idaho. I have read about these falls when I was teaching Idaho history. It was fun to finally get to see them. They are beautiful.



 More pictures of the falls. We walked on a trail and took pictures at all the different vantage points.

 On the drive to the restaurant we passed the Twin Falls temple. I took this picture out the front windshield, hence the bugs.

 Sisters...we miss Bailey.

Two handsome men. We miss Chad and Isaac.





Cooking Dinner and Winter in Idaho

Miranda's Valentine's Day dinner table

I have been a little worried about Miranda going off to college. She doesn't really know her way around a kitchen. She is going to have to be on the campus meal plan or she will starve to death.  When all of our kids were home I used to have them cook dinner one night a week for the family. Over the years we have gone away from that and I thought it was time to bring it back. It just so happens that Miranda's first night of cooking landed on Valentines day. She made us pink heart shaped pancakes. She also went all out with table decorations.

February Morning

Eric took this picture one morning as the sun was just rising and there was hoar frost on the trees. It was a beautiful, cold day. We are very ready for Spring to come. I don't think Mother Nature really cares how we feel. The forcast is for more snow all this week.  



The Joys of Being a Teacher

Today my class of 3rd graders disected owl pellets. They were a little nervous about touching the pellets. I reassured them that it was ok because the science company that sent the pellets steralized them. They wanted to know how, so I told them I  didn't know exactly but thought they probably heated them up somehow like in a microwave type device. They were good with that explanation. We had a great time finding all kinds of rodent bones. After is was all over and everything was cleaned up, the office called and told me to send a little girl down to leave with her mom. I did. A few minutes later the office called me and asked me what in the world we had just done in science? The little girl reported to the office staff and her mom saying, "Guess what we did? Mrs. Robertson cooked rats and we got to take them apart!" Hmmm...interesting what little kids hear.