Millions of Peaches

Figured it was a good time to update everyone on the Foote Family here in lovely Everett Washington. It is hard to believe that we have been living in this heavenly place for about 2 months. We are truly enjoying ourselves up here in the sunny Pacific Northwest. Its sort of funny. I moved here partially for the rain and the clouds which I love. However we came at the very beginning of a potentially record breaking sun streak. We are currently sitting at 40 straight days without rain. 11 more days and Seattle officially breaks the record. It has been rather glorious.



Every day we bring our dinner onto our back patio and enjoy eating our meal in the cool weather. I don't say this to brag just to explain how nice it is up here right now. I'm sure that once winter rolls around, all my Arizona friends will be showing me where its at.

In the spirit of the season we decided to spend some time learning how to can stuff today. Specifically we decided to can peaches for the first time ever. We bought a case of Yakima Peaches a week or so ago and set them aside to ripen. After church today we went to work on this load of peaches. 1st we washed them all. Then we boiled them for about a minute and placed them in an ice water bath. Sarah's favorite part came next. She thoroughly enjoyed rubbing the skin off of the peaches in one clean peel. I must say it was a little disturbing watching her enjoy peeling the skins off :). Once completed we sliced and pitted the peaches and then submerged them in the suger water bath. We shoved those peaches in the jars and then pressure cooked/canned them. They currently await a seal check in the morning.



Was it worth it? I gotta say having done all of that work, I don't think so. I may change my mind once we start eating them as part of our food supply but we'll see.

The boys are doing good. It has been an extremely long summer. They have been out of school since May and start again this Wednesday. They are both sad and happy that summer is finally coming to an end. We have had plenty of time to play in the water.



And build anything and everything out of legos.



But it is time to go back to class and learn stuff. We are very excited for the boys to go back to school. Because we weren't sure where we would be living until mid summer we haven't gotten the situation quite how we would like. Tyson will be attending the school closest to us for half day kindergarten while Alexander will be in the 3rd grad at a school slightly farther away. I'm sure things will turn out well however and we are excited.

Tyson got to meet his teacher last week and I half to say, there were more families speaking Spanish there than in Gilbert.

Well I have rambled enough. We'll talk later.