Jenks Family

Last Saturday I ordered a hat and a headband with interchangeable flowers for my girls from sillygoosegifts.com. They arrived on Tuesday, even after I paid for the slow shipping! Wow! They are so super cute. Of course, they both wore them each day since then. I had to include a pic because I just love them. Because they are crocheted and knitted, they are soft to wear. I am planning on ordering several more flowers for the headband.

The other arrival this week was our 4th grade state history book, made by our 4th grader. She made it in conjunction with a state history quilt. So, of course, I had to include pics of that too. She is very proud of all her hard work and if is great to have something to show how much she learned. She'll also have better retention because she can look at the quilt and book and remember the things that she learned. Each picture on the quilt were drawn by her and represent a topic that she learned about. Each page in the book explains one of the pictures on the quilt. This project was a total pain and we wanted to just quit a few times but we are so very glad that we didn't quit. We love the book and the quilt and feel it was definitely worth the work. This summer, the quilt will be on display along with the other 4th graders from WAVA who also completed this project at the State History museum in Tacoma.

As long as I'm reporting on work accomplished, this just in: 52 quarts of applesauce in 8 hours. Jen and I worked all day yesterday and we finished 52 quarts by about 5:00. She kept 24 processed quarts and some for the fridge. I kept 25 quarts and some for the fridge. Yipee! I was visiting with the tellers at the bank last night and they asked how much I had made. When I told them, they called me crazy. I suppose it may seem crazy but I can't tell you how much I have fallen in love with food storage the last few years. I love having food on hand and not having to worry about if we will be able to eat for the next month if some aweful disaster were to happen and we couldn' t buy food. There is a feeling of peace that comes with having food storage, or it could just be peace as a result of obedience to modern-day prophets. I bet it's both. Either way, I love it.

Jen was worried about my kitchen. I wasn't. I thought I'd post a picture of it at it's wost yesterday, in the heat of the battle. The floor was terribly sticky by the end of the day and therefore collected a ton of dirt (the pic does not do it justice). My awesome wonderful kids did a lot to help clean up, including mopping the floor on their hands and knees. I had to leave for a wedding reception so, I couldn't help them. I'll finish what they didn't get done this morning.