Laughter

Cute Lucy and Rowdy

For the 24th, we went up in the canyon and hung out and played games and roasted marshmellows. We went up with the Whitmores, and since Lori doesn't like fire, we roasted marshmellows over the camp stove.

The other night, I went in Lucy's room to make sure she was asleep, and this is what I found. She had her thumb in her mouth and she was holding Rowdy's hand. It was so cute, I had to take a picture.

here is what we have been up to

So, I have been bad at posting lately...so here is what we have been up to.

We got to celebrate Grandma Lu's birthday. We went to dinner at Mimi's, and it was yummy. Lucy is excited for the U footbal season to start, so she dressed up for the occasion in her Utah onsie.

Lucy has started to eat more and more solids. She gets it everywhere, I am not sure how much she gets in her mouth.

Today, we went to the Oquirrh Mountain temple open house. It was very pretty.

Our apricot tree has been dropping fruit like crazy, it falls as you are picking up all the ones that have fallen on the ground. I made a double batch of apricot leather yesterday, and we still have almost a 5 gallon bucket left, plus more on the tree. IF YOU WANT APRICOTS, PLEASE FEEL FREE TO STOP BY!!! :)

Tomatoes, pumpkins, and cucumbers

Our garden is growing so fast. It changes everyday and I am getting excited for the first tomotoes. We had some of our green beans with dinner last night and we had squash last week. It is so fun to see it change and grow. The weeds are starting to take over a little now, but it is looking good.

One question...why do all the squash plants have to be so prickly? My arm sting and itch after I dig through the plants to pick and pull weeds. I guess I need to just remember to wear sleeves :)

Apricot Leather

My Grandma Moeller used to make apricot leather all the time. I have memories of the trays of leather with the netting over the top, so the bugs wouldn't get at it. Well, our apricot tree produced fruit this year (which it hasn't done in quite a while) and so I decided that I wanted to try to make some leather. The apricots have started to fall, and I hate to see them go to waste. My mom didn't have my grandma's recipe, so I looked up a few recipes online, and combined them to make my own.

Here are some of the apricots that we picked from our tree, ready to be washed and sliced.

I ended up with about 12 cups of sliced apricots.

The recipes that I found online all varied somewhat in the amount of sugar and what other ingredients to add. Some added a lot of sugar, other a little or honey. I decided to use 2/3 cups sugar and 1/3 pineapple juice for the 12 cups of apricots.

I put them on the stove and heated it up until it simmered and cooked it for about 10 minutes.

Here they are all bubbly and yummy!

My mom had my grandma's old pot that she was use to puree the apricots (all the recipes online said to just puree them, so I think that I food processor or blender would work just fine). I used my grandmother's pot, which prevents the skins from getting in the leather.

Afterwards, you end up with a pretty colored puree that looks like this.

I transferred the puree to baking sheets covered in plastic wrap and put them in the oven on the lowest setting with the door open a little. I've heard that gas ovens work well for this, because you can just use the pilot light. My grandma used to put them outside, but I didn't have any netting to keep the bugs out. In the afternoon, it warmed up outside so I moved them to Daniel's truck, where they could bake, but not get eaten by bugs. I think the car works well, because it acts like an oven, but it doesn't take any electricity and it doesn't heat your house up.

After about 6-8 hours, you end up with yummy fruit leather that you can roll up like a fruit roll-up. I am hoping to make another batch or two before all the apricots are gone. It is yummy!!

We love Lucy!