Busy Week, ahem... Actively Engaged Days

What a week!  Sunday was a day for sharing.

I shared what little I know, ahem... my vast knowledge about canning and freezing with my daughter-in-law and her friend Kali.  (I really have a hard time figuring out what this poor girl's name is because Mike, Stephen, and even her husband, Mark, tease her by calling her Kallie and Kathy and who-knows-what-else.  And when you are sitting and chatting with one another, you rarely call somebody by her name...So, when I got ready to introduce her the other day, my mind just went blank.  Sorry, Kathy Kallie Katherine Kimberly Katy, ahem... Kali!)

~sigh~

Anyway, I guided these sweet girls through canning six beautiful jars of green beans that were fresh from Stephen and Bonnie's garden and picked and snapped and washed by her!  (What you don't realize is that she has never aspired to be a domestic goddess and has always been an outdoor girl and is now a business maven during her off-outdoor-girl time, which is six-days-per-week, since she and Stephen own their own business.  Read about that HERE and HERE.)  Her beans turned out to look like blue-ribbon-winners at anybody's state fair, though.

At this point, you may be wondering why I'm not sharing photographs of this momentous occasion.  Well, there is a perfectly good explanation and it might have something to do with my sitting at the island tasting a splash of Arrington Vineyards' Firefly Rose (that they brought along) and yack-yack-yacking and never even thinking of taking a photo of these cute, sweet, hard-working girls I'm bossing around, ahem... mentoring through the preservation-of-food lessons.

 ~sigh~

The girls also sliced and blanched and chilled and bagged five quarts of yellow squash and five quarts of zucchini squash.  It turned out to be beautiful as well!  Of course, this culinary delight which was 'put-up' for future meals when we are in the dead of winter, for example, was also grown right in these girls' gardens and picked by their own sweet hands (and maybe the rough, calloused hands of their husbands, too).

Do you see me puffed with pride over these girls?

~sigh~

Monday was a day the hubs took a day off from work and we had the chance spend the day together.  Wednesday was another day for my friend Margaret and I to do some more work on school-work, ahem... Refreshing and Updating.  Friday was a day for a follow-up visit to the doctor for Mike and, of course I went along to find out what the doctor had to say because who knows what it would sound like coming from Mike?  Somehow he seems to hear medical instructions a little bit differently than I do.  You know, like, "go home and keep your leg propped up," turned into, "I'm going out to the barn to feed and water the chickens and do a little grass mowing."

So, I'm spending this Saturday morning trying to catch up and wrangle the house back into submission, ahem... leisurely sipping coffee and I might swish over the floors after I nibble a piece of toast.