Peaches!

We like peaches! We bought a big box of them from the local grocery store when they came in from California. They were delicious right away, and we all ate them for snacks for about a week, until the fruit flies started attacking. We decided to can the rest to save them for cold winter days.

The big jars are just plain peaches in light syrup. The little jars are peach preserves, made with chopped peaches, sugar, lemon juice, and powdered pectin. David and Sarah helped a lot with the peach preparation for the preserves. I dunked the peaches in boiling water, the kids rubbed the skin off in cold water, I cut out the bitter red stuff around the seed, and David chopped the peaches in our new (rummage sale) chopper.

Our picnic table

We really like the picnic table that came with the parsonage.
Here you see Sarah and Michael eating popsicles that came from a church member whose cats we watched a few weeks ago.

The strange picture is of our baby caterpillars, one week after they hatched from their eggs. We found some funny yellow dots on the back of a basil leaf and decided to put in a jar instead of in the spaghetti sauce. About a week later, the eggs looked like they had been squished, and I was very upset. I was afraid that the hot windowsill had cooked them, but then noticed some tiny, clear, wiggling specks on the bottom of the jar and realized that they had hatched! We've been feeding them basil leaves and stems for about a month now and are enjoying seeing them grow.


Today we finished up our peach canning! There are some in the freezer, and the rest are in 3 quart jars of plain peaches and 3 1/2 pints of peach preserves. David and Sarah had fun rubbing the skins off the peaches at the sink. David also got to do ALL of the slicing with our newly acquired food chopper. He even figured out how to put the thing together!

David started preschool!

Our little David just finished his first week of preschool! He is going to the community preschool (it meets in the K-12 school in town) two days a week for speech therapy and time to play with other kids. We had a good time picking out school supplies and packing them in his backpack the night before his first day. Here he is, shouting in the sunshine before we walked over to the school.

This week they toured the school, learned how to use their lockers, colored pictures, and got candy from the principal's office. David really liked that.

At home, we have been doing a lot of science activities lately. All of the kids enjoy harvesting cherry tomatoes from the flowerpot near the back door and collecting/raising all sorts of bugs. We found some funny yellow eggs on a basil leaf last week, so we put it in a jar in the window to see what would happen. Last Friday, they hatched into tiny little caterpillars! We took them with us to visit some friends in LeMars, Iowa and have been feeding them basil leaves all week. They are now about three times as big as they were then! We let about half of them go this morning as it was getting pretty crowded in the jar. I'm hoping they will be the cute fuzzy kind when they get bigger.

David has also been examining sugar and salt crystals with a magnifying glass, setting cardboard box/stick traps for rabbits and squirrels in the backyard, collecting cicada shells, and spreading grass clippings on the flowerbeds.

Last night, Dan brought home a fire bowl for the backyard! We started a nice fire in it and sat around roasting marshmallows after Michael went to bed. I don't think he should be around it just yet! I was the designated Snack Master (marshmallow roaster), which was especially nice because I am the only one who likes charred marshmallows. Quite a few of them "accidentally" got set on fire last night....

Sarah is 3!

Our little Sarah is now 3! We had a party with all four grandparents and Auntie Emmy on her birthday. She likes to be a fairy princess, so we used a lot of pink fun foam and ribbons to make a tiara and wand for her. Auntie Emmy helped with the artistic side of the crafts, especially with the hot glue gun. She is a professional, you know. Grandma Redhage helped a lot with decorating the pink castle cake. She got the cake unstuck from the pan and then got the towers stuck onto the rest of the cake. Grandpa Redhage and Daddy put up balloons, Grandma Bradbury supervised the kitchen and potato salad, and Mommy tried to keep everything running smoothly. Where was Grandpa Bradbury? He had his camera, of course, but then we found him outside, fighting off enemies in the sky with the kids.

Grandparents are fun!

Grandma and Grandpa Redhage came to visit a few weeks ago, and the boys had fun entertaining them.

Michael and Grandpa are playing Monkey See, Monkey Do--I'm not sure which one is leading.








David is showing Grandma his Plesiosaur/Sea Monster that he made at the Vermillion library. It slowly creeps out of the water, scaring you!


The weeks are flying by here, with Dan traveling to Houston as a delegate for the national LCMS convention in July and the kids spending a lot of time outside playing. The sandbox may be out of sand soon, as they keep bringing it inside on their clothes, in their hair, etc. At least they get a lot of baths!

Oh! We do have exciting news! David learned how to ride a bike without training wheels! That was his goal for when he was five years old, and he figured it out last Saturday on the first try. A nice family from church brought over a big kid bike that they had outgrown, and David hopped on, pedaled hard, and took off! We can really zoom around town now.

Fun with Auntie Emmy

We are enjoying a visit from Auntie Emmy!

The kids and I made a Thunder Cake with strawberries on top to eat after church today. David read a book about a grandma who helps her granddaughter enjoy a thunderstorm by making a special chocolate cake, so we had to try the recipe. There is a secret ingredient in the cake that we can't tell you about, or you might not be brave enough to try it. Emily pretended that she didn't know what it was, and she did enjoy the cake. Now that I look at the picture, I think I am hungry for it too!



This afternoon, David and Sarah wanted to paint, so we got out the watercolors. They quickly moved on to acrylic craft paint on a rock, then we moved outside to use latex paint on some shelves for the kids' rooms. When Michael woke up from his nap, he wanted to join in the fun, so Emily gave him a bowl of water and an old paintbrush. I think Sarah gave him the purple necklace.

Wedding Fun

We had a great time at my friend Tammy's wedding in June! We took advantage of the beautiful flowers and view to try for a family picture. This was the best one....

It was great to get together with old friends again--Tammy and I have been friends since 6th grade, and Laura and I have known each other since we had baby swim class together almost 30 years ago! Our old friend Keri joined our families for the dinner, and she got to experience a Meal with Toddlers. In her words, it "looked like a hurricane hit the table." As Sarah would say, "And it DID."

The little boys were tired after running around in the heat, so they lined up chairs to wait for their turn to dance. Here, Andrew and David look like they won't make it through the couple's first song. Later, however.....