Finished Canning

Well, with the help of a friend today, the canning is done, 18 tuna made 290 half pints, and 23 pints. If we had done them all in 1/2 pints it would have been 336. We figured out that one tuna makes about 18 half pints. We are trying to decide if he will go out again. We obviously have plenty of tuna, enough to share. But he loves catching them. It is a lot of work canning them, you will all have to know that with each bottle you open comes a lot of love!! I was going to dress up, but this is how I looked!! I wish I would have had dad take a pic of me in front of the canner with my laptop! although you would have thought I was lounging more than I really did! love you all!!!

Fishing for tuna on Saturday

I took two friends with me on my boat for tuna fishing on Saturday. We came back to port with 28 tuna. You read that right 28 as in twenty eight. This is definitely a good time to be redundant. The tuna weighed between 20 and 30 lbs each and they are very hard fighters. A tuna is very aerodynamic and built for speed. I am told they can swim 70 mph. We had 612 lbs of tuna fish on board of my 22 foot boat. Plus the weight of the ice. We had so many coolers full of ice on board it was like a gauntlet to try to walk from the front of the boat to the back. My beloved wife was up to 2:30 in the morning canning tuna and didn't get anywhere near done. The more she worked I noticed she started having a little bit of an attitude. I call it the "tuna tude". I think if I went again soon and threw another 10 or 15 tuna on the counter top it could jeapodize my marriage.

question about pictures

I was wondering if anyone knows how to make a picture bigger again on a post after you have published them. Example, my leslie post, how could I make the pictures bigger now without deleting them and reloading them? Thanks!

Finally Posting again

I have the Leslie visit below this post. I posted the pics on that post in the small size, let me know what you think. Should I change them to the medium size or what?

One fun thing that has happened recently is I picked my first big tomato, we have been having several cherry tomatos, I think all I have is the orange ones. They are very tasty so that is okay.


Steve went tuna fishing today. He went all by himself. Now to people that have never been tuna fishing or don't know anything about it, you have to go quite far out in the ocean, and you have to troll(drive the boat at a slower speed) at 7 mph, which doesn't sound fast, but for the ocean that is pretty fast trolling. Then when you catch a fish you have to stop reel it in, hope the boat doesn't start drifting, do all this stuff to the fish after you get it in, then get the boat back on course and start all over again. If you have someone to help it is a lot easier. He got 9 tuna, each around 20-30 pounds give or take a few either way. Last time he got 10 with help. Soooo you know what that means, two things, he is a mighty fisherman!!! and I have a lot of work to do!! He is also going out tomorrow. I have company on Sunday and am trying to get ready to go to New York, plus get ready for a YW program on Sunday!!!! Whew! I think I am crazy. Steve is just so excited I can't say stop!! But after tomorrow I am going to have to say stop!!! I am canning the tuna this time. I am sitting in my garage tending the canner with my laptop on my lap. I can't leave the canner alone. I have fifty-seven 1/2 pint jars in the canner and I have more fish in the fridge to can. If you look at the time on this post, you can rightly assume I will finish the rest tomorrow. You got to love laptops!!! I think that is all that is new.

Oh Danielle, this time as I was filling the jars I watched Gilmore Girls, thanks for the suggestion!!

The Leslie's come for a visit!!!

The blessing and curse of digital cameras, is that you can literally take hundreds of pics. I can take them rapidly to make it better and worse. So I have a gillion pics to go through before I can post them. Seriously over 100 from the Leslie trip. There were so many pics I chose the small veiw, you can click on them to see them bigger, but would you rather they be the medium size to start with?? Let me know.

Anyway we had a great time, they arrived just before dinner on the 12th of July. We had some of the best chinook salmon I have ever tasted-Steve had gone fishing that day. But before that Steve took the girls out to meet the goats.





The next day the girls and I went out and made the biggest sand castle I have ever made, we used a real shovel as well as little ones. As you can see from the pics, Anna got tired of the process and Gracie was having fun running around. But in the end voila, a cool castle.



Later that day everyone started to show up. Amy and Mike came first, Megan came about dinner time, and Jake and Lyndsey late in the evening.

We all went to the Harry Potter movie Friday evening, it was fun to go together, I hadn't done that since they all lived at home. Everyone but me as usual loved the movie. I just can't handle the changes and the missing parts. I kept waiting for Sirius's mom to start screaming. I know I need to get a grip on it, but oh well.

Saturday was a big day. We had the tea party, which included baking little flower shaped cakes, tiny sugar cookies, lemonade, cucumber sandwiches, PBJ sandwiches, and it seems like there was something else, but I can't remember. Since there were so many of us we used the real china. We all dressed up and had fake names. I wish I could remember them all, Ruby's was the only truly made up name, which she promptly forgot. Every time we talked to her Lyndsey had to remind her of her name. It was great fun. Megan-Kate from Tennessee had a great accent and kept us laughing. Amy with a name I can't remember was a queen from Ethiopia, her community had about 10 people. I always have an English accent so most follow suit. We had a great time.


Ruby expertly putting on Lyndsey's lipstick. Gracie started a little early and only preferred the hot chocolate.

Aren't we lovely!!! Aliese wanted a Pride and Prejudice dress, I thought we did pretty good with my wedding dress and safety pins!

After the tea party Amy took the girls out with Megan to teach them how to play Crochet. I love how Ruby and Gracie are right in there, also take note that Gracie's mallet color changes, It was great fun to watch. I was cleaning up tea party stuff, but had to run out and take some pics. Crochet turned out to be a hit, many more games were played, I won when I played with the girls, Steve lost, hmm... what does that say about Grandpa and Grandma?


Do you think this is the stance Amy was teaching them to use? Sorry Amy couldn't resist!




If you look closely at Anna you can tell that maybe the little people are in the way!

The next day was Sunday, after church the younger men went out to build a city, Jake according to Darin was the city planner, after Lyndsey called Jacob to help her, Darin said Mike and him could only think of very boring things to build. The mighty builders, with their assistants of course, in action.






The hole is a Coliseum then the mighty city! And finally below, we have the master builders: Jacob, Dairn and Mike.


Sunday evening all the valley people but Meg went home. Megan stayed and hung out with us the next day.

Monday we went to Strawberry hill. It was fun, we even saw a sea urchin and we think some crabs mating.

There were endless hours of fun on the beach. Darin even went out boogie boarding, crazy or brave? Watched movies, went to the outlet mall, and just basically enjoyed one another. I was sad but exhausted when they all left on Friday. Like Lizzie always says, "it would be so fun if we all lived around one another." Well, I love you all!!! mom










One of these days one of my children besides Lizzie will grab my camera and take a picture of me with someone w/o me asking (hint, hint) so I will exist after I am gone!! :-)