New baby, Group meeting, and Canning

Well. I usually try to do one post a week, but something has been wrong with either our wifi or our computer (or a combination of the two) (or the internet provider, who really even knows?) and it just hasn't been working, but a few mintutes ago I picked it up to try it (fully not expecting it to work), and what do you know? It's having a good moment so I'm going to try to get everything in that I want to say before it dies on me again.

Which is funny because I really am typing faster just in case it is preparing to die on me in exactly 10 minutes or something.

There are several different things I need to get on here and there is no way I can make it all flow into one pretty post, so we're going with numbers on this one.

1. We have a new baby. It's a girl and her name is Bella. She weighs 2 pounds and 3 ounces. I had forgotten what it was like to be awakened with crying in the middle of the night, but now I remember that I don't really care for it.

She is a shih-tzu - yorkie mix. When I went to Canton the first weekend in June, she was begging me to take her home. So I did.

Bea is not thrilled about her at all, and the two couldn't be more different. Bea is very lazy and laid back. Bella wants to be chewing something or playing or peeing or pooping ALL THE TIME.

Well, she does sleep sometimes. And my favorite thing about her is that at night she lays on my shoulder and lets me rock her to sleep.

Yes, I needed a baby fix and this cute little thing was my solution.

And even though Bea doesn't like her, she is getting a little extra attention around here from all of us too.

Yes, it is as it appears. Austin is kissing her hand :)

2. Friday evening Robbie came home from work, Aaron was out riding his 4-wheeler and Austin was on the golf cart. Aaron was begging me to cook so we didn't have to go to town, but, well...it was Friday. And I just didn't feel like cooking. And I needed to go to the bank. And whatever other excuse I could come up with to not have to come with an idea of what to cook.

Anyway, we had gone out to eat and were headed home when our neighbor called Robbie. I could tell from hearing only one side of the conversation that something was not right and it involved possible damage to our house, police, and wondering if Robbie really thought our neighbor was kidding him or he just couldn't think of anything to say other than, "you're kidding me".

So here's what happened. There was a high speed police chase going on in our neighborhood (and I say that loosely because we live in the country, not even close to being a neighborhood) and the driver of the car that was trying to get away decided he would turn down our driveway to get away from the police. What he did not know is that if you turn that fast off of a road onto a gravel driveway you will leave tire marks on the road that are easy to follow. And that you may hit a tree if you try to take that turn going 80 mph. And that we have some neighbors that are very well aware of people coming and going from our house and knew that this was not the type of people we usually entertain.

Anyway, they came down our driveway, parked the car behind our shop, and got out and ran into the woods.

Ok. Here's something you need to understand about our house. You cannot see it from the road. You have to know where you're going to get here. And there has only been one time I can remember in the past 3 years of living out here that someone took a wrong turn and ended up here. People just don't come back here unless we know them. Ever.

So the police came down our driveway and saw the car that they had been chasing and they caught the people as they were running through our woods.

I have to give it to them for running through these woods though. The area they were in is full of thistles, branches sticking out everywhere, and snakes, spiders, and other little creatures that like to bite or attack.

The officer showing us where the weed was found and where we can possibly find more if we choose to roam through our woods. I do not see this happening.

I guess after running from the cops you have enough adrenaline to not care what kind of danger you're putting yourself in in the woods.

Personally, I would rather go to jail.

So the police caught the 2 people, cuffed them, and loaded them up. We got here just in time to see the police car they were in and talk to the cop that arrested them. They had found a bag of weed in the woods and said there was possibly more, and these people had a lot of charges against them by the time they got caught. As we were pulling in, there was a wrecker pulling out of our driveway with the getaway car loaded up in the back.

We were gone from our house maybe an hour and all of this happened during that time. I know that if we had stayed home my boys would've still been outside playing and would've possibly been hurt or even killed just being out there.

The morals of the story are: Eating out can save your life. And God is good.

3. This past week I have been working to get the house fixed up for a group we had coming over last night. I'm not really sure why, but I always seem to want to start projects right before I have people coming over. But my projects all got done (and will get their own post at a later date), and the get-together was a success.

The church we go to has over 400 members, so small groups are the best way to really get to know people. We had our small group over, plus a few others that we had invited last night.

We had sandwiches, hot dogs, and chips and dip.

This was during the devo and the kids were lined up on the stairs.

And it just happened to be Glenda's birthday so I got her a cake from The Bakerman. It had red daisies and a Razorback on it.

After she saw her cake we decided that a Hog Call was in order. So everyone (that was an Arkansas fan) did the hog call. It was so neat and I was wishing that we had an Arkansas football game to sit down and watch after that.

One of the reasons the hog call was cool was because we had Ike Forte at our house and he is a Razorback legend. Even though I've never heard him talk about it. Which makes him even cooler to me. But to do the hog call with him was pretty awesome.

We ended up having about 50 people at our house and I loved every minute of it. Robbie and I have always liked to entertain at our house, and for the past 3 years we really haven't had the space in our house for more than just our family, so we are eating this up. Plus the group we had over here is such a good group of people. Even though it didn't end until 10:30pm, I still wasn't ready for everyone to leave.

4. We now grow and can our own food. That is a sentence I didn't think I would ever say. My mom has always had a garden and canned her own food, but all I can really remember about that is walking through the kitchen as a jar was sealing and being scared to death when it popped, and that I HATE the smell of vinegar. And I still do. Cannot stand it. But since Robbie decided to plant a garden this year and things are actually growing in it, I have to do something with it. He planted lots of banana peppers and I love banana peppers, but not right out of the garden. I like them pickled (which ironically just means soaked in vinegar water) so I was either going to have to learn how to can my own peppers or throw away Robbie's hard-earned creation.

So I learned to can food. My friend Sara helped me and between an internet recipe, her mom, and my mom we got it done. And y'all, they are delicious. Better than any store bought ones I've ever had. And I'm pretty sure I could live the rest of my life only eating ritz, cream cheese, and my peppers.  It's a little taste of heaven on a cracker.

The finished product

I have also shucked and de-silked (is that a word?) corn and put it in the freezer, and I've cut up okra and have it ready to cook also.

It's like I don't even know who I am anymore.


That is all for today. I actually made it through the entire post with my computer still up and running. If it remains in this good mood, I plan on putting up pics of my kids rooms this Friday.

We shall see.

UPDATE: I've had several people asking me what the recipe was for the banana peppers, and since they were delicious, I though I needed to post it. It's super easy and they are so, so good!

2 pounds peppers
6 cloves of garlic (sliced in half lengthwise)
1 1/2 Cups Water
1 1/2 Cups white vinegar
4 teaspoons salt

1. Wash the peppers. Cut the tops off and remove as many of the seeds as you can.

2. Cut the peppers into rings of whatever thickness you prefer (The smaller, the better in my opinion).

3. Put the pepper rings and garlic pieces into a glass jar that has an airtight seal when closed.

4. In a medium size saucepan, add the water, vinegar, and salt. Bring to a boil over medium high heat.

5. Place your pepper and garlic filled jars in a large pot and put water in the pot just below the opening of the jars and turn on high heat to boil. If there is room for your jar lids in this pot, you can also put them in there to heat up, or get a small saucepan with water and bring lids to a boil (this helps them to seal).

6. Remove the jars from heat and pour the vinegar water over the top of the peppers to fill the jar.

7. Use a knife to move peppers around to remove air bubbles and get the peppers and garlic submerged in the liquid.

8. Get one lid at a time out of the boiling water (with tongs, because they will burn you otherwise...or so I've heard). Place the lid on the jar and put the jar ring around the top. Leave on counter overnight.

9. The next day the peppers are ready to be put in the fridge.

10. A few days later, buy some ritz and cream cheese. Put the cream cheese on the ritz, a pepper on top of that, and let me know if you can stop after eating only one! ;)

Enjoy!!