For the Bounty of the Earth

We live in such a beautiful world! Last Thursday, I picked up two bundles of basil from the farmers' market (Oh, how long I have waited for this day!) and picked at least a bundle's worth from a pot in our garden. That night, we had pesto for dinner, and even better than that, made seven more batches of pesto to put into our freezer for the winter.

While Hubby worked on the pesto, I took a large bowl out behind our building with a stepstool and got to work picking blackberries. Since they hadn't been picked since before I left on our vacation, there were tons of super ripe berries just falling off into my hands. I ended up with twelve cups of blackberries and about half that much in juice and puree after I had seeded them, just enough for two batches of freezer jam.

The whole time that we were working on making pesto and picking blackberries, I couldn't help but be grateful for the bounty that the Lord puts on this earth and for the desire that I had to take advantage of it. Once again, we won't have to buy jam for another year (especially since I've made another batch since and have enough juice for one more) and I certainly won't be tempted to buy pesto, or even basil, from the grocery store. We'll certainly be making more pesto while the market still has basil and with the jam and pesto, we'll be eating summer all year long.

A Week to remember

For the past week, Anna and I have been off galavanting in Oregon while Hubby stayed at home to keep down the fort. And quite the week we had!

First, Anna's favorite single aunt wanted to take her to the beach. There we enjoyed lots of wet sand, cold water and good company.

Anna "helped" her aunt by demolishing all the sand towers she could possibly make. If you listen hard to the video, you might just hear Anna say "Helping!" while scurrying from tower to tower.

Anna got some sand on her leg. While that might be normal for the beach, Anna did not think so and held her leg up hoping that we would clean it off for her.

After the beach became too cold to handle, we went back to Grandma's house, with a short stop at a farm stand that had a few goats, bunnies, and chickens. Anna had a lot of fun feeding the goat.

Here's our little sunflower!

After the weekend, Aunt, Anna and I went to the Portland Children's Museum, which is next to the Zoo (Can I just say I love Cultural Passes?!). There, Anna got to color, play with clay, trains and balls, "drive" an ambulance, and dig. All the while, her aunt and I were running trying to keep up with her. Well, her aunt was running; I was trying to sit down as much as possible. What a great time she had.

Digging!

Our last day there was the opening day of the County Fair and we just had to go. We had a busy day looking at all the cows, goats, sheep, poultry, llamas, and rabbits. And that was after getting cheesecakes ready to enter into the daily contest (we didn't win, but we did get in for free!). While the highlight for Anna was probably all the animals, or the ice cream, my highlight was seeing this:

This was the very first year I have ever entered anything in the fair, and I won! I entered a sourdough loaf (Thank you to the Bogardus family for the recipe and the sourdough start!) that I didn't think turned out that well, but it won. Of course, I had entered it into the sourdough section and there were only two other entries. I got to taste the other two, and mine certainly was the most sour of the group and my mother-in-law just raved about the texture (I thought it was a little lacking). To say the least, I was very proud of my accomplishment and maybe I'll be able to enter more in the future. I am getting better at making 100% whole wheat hearth bread...

So, now we are home and glad to be there. But it was a wonderful vacation!

Green Thumb

Because of pregnancy and the distance we had to travel to garden, we decided to garden at home this summer. This, of course, is rather limiting since we live in an apartment and have to use containers to garden. However, we have a few containers up on the roof deck of our building (it certainly is nice to have an "in" with the managers) and we are very proud of our plants.

This is our garden.

We have three tomato plants (one cherry, two larger), a pot of basil and parsley, a bell pepper, arugula, Swiss chard and chives. As you can see, the tomatoes are doing quite well, especially the cherry which is covered with baby tomatoes.

Our pepper has 13 peppers growing, according to my husband's count. I haven't bothered counting. They seem innumerable.

Our cherry tomato is huge. We can't even fit all of it in the tomato cage! We lost a few tomatoes while we were gone for the Fourth of July, but it is still covered.

This is one of our other tomato plants. See how many tomatoes it has?

Before I took the pictures of our garden, I had pretty much decimated our Swiss chard to make dinner. But look how much we got out of a little container!

Growing this garden has been very good for me. I've always loved fresh produce (thanks, Mom, for spoiling me) and I like to see success. Gardens, while they don't provide instant gratification, certainly progress fast enough to be either very satisfying or very discouraging. I'm feeling very satisfied this year.

Growing up

Anna certainly is growing up. Just this morning she did what every other toddler girl does at some point in her life: insist on wearing a bathing suit, just because. Granted, I did just buy the suit yesterday, so when she saw it this morning, she insisted on putting it on.

Doesn't she look cute! It sure was hard to get her out of it though!

Anna is also enjoying trying on Mommy's shoes. She got the zippers on these boots done by herself.

Neat Freak

I don't know which side of the family she got this from, but my darling Anna has become a neat freak. "Uh oh" is her word to say "there is something dirty there and I won't do anything you ask until it is removed or cleaned". This happens especially when we are eating. Just today at lunch, she noticed the lentil soup on her bib, said "uh oh" and then refused to wear it because it was dirty. In addition to this, she is always wanting a napkin to clean her hands, tray, and cup during dinner. In fact, she would spend all of dinner time cleaning up rather than eating, if she had a choice!

I have a video of her that I can't post because it is too long, but it shows her in the bathtub wiping things down. I really don't know where she learned this. I do try to keep our living space clean, but I'm not that much of a neat freak. Perhaps it is just a phase that she will grow out of...

Count your blessings...

Hubby and I manage an apartment complex as a way to live comfortably in an expensive city while on a student budget. We feel that we were very lucky with the place that we found and have been working here for almost two years.

Yesterday, I was talking to our property manager about some rent increases, and she made the comment that perhaps we need to increase them even more because we have absolutely no trouble filling vacant apartments. Well, that got me to thinking, as it has many times recently, and I really don't think it has anything to do with what we charge for rent, the state of the building, or even our skill as managers. But how do you explain that you think that building stays full because God is blessing you?

I really do feel blessed because of how things are going here in our building. Our pay is determined by how many people pay on time, and over the year and a half that we have been on that payment plan, we have fewer and fewer people paying late. Also, we get a bonus if we are able to rent apartments within a week of vacancy. We have only missed 3 or 4 in the whole time that we have been renting apartments, and we've had quite a few vacancies. In fact, we had three people give notice this month and already they are rented. Honestly, how could God not be blessing us? We certainly aren't the best managers ever. We make our mistakes. But we still have a full building and our property manager wonders how we are able to do it.

All of this makes me want to continue to pay tithing forever and to accept all church responsibilities that come my way. Now, I've never really had a problem with those things, but seeing how much we are blessed right now just confirms to me that those things, among others, really do make a difference in our lives.

Here he is!

This morning was the big appointment, the moment of truth, when we would be able to see our little baby and potentially find out the gender. And while our little guy didn't cooperate all that well, he did allow us to find out his gender. And since I am almost 21 weeks along, there is no mistake. Besides, it is really hard to confuse a boy with a girl, though mistakes have been made in the other direction.

That said, our little boy should be making his grand appearance in October!