Muppet Meet and Canning

Highlights are the best you're going to get this week.

Muppet Meet: Underfoot and Hurricane participated in a swim meet for 8 year olds and younger.

The races were broken up by ages. There were at least 5 heats per age. This is for girls and boys age 4-8. The meet was fun. Each heat winner was awarded a ring pop.

Hurricane took 23 seconds off his initial time from the beginning of the swim season. Underfoot improved on his times as well.

They had fun but got in the car and said they didn't want to swim for the finals in a few weeks because it was SO HOT.

We'll see if they change their tune before the declaration time this week.

Space Wars: The Gaslight Theater presented Space Wars.

It was a change from Star Wars. Underfoot and Hurricane were surprised to attend.

They have been singing the changed song lyrics from popular songs since last week.

Not So Junior Ranger: Underfoot participated in Junior Ranger camp for the 3rd time. When he graduated, he was awarded the "Not So Junior Ranger" badge.

His group were the scorpions. They were tasked to create a National Park. Their park's focus had habitats for Ewoks, Wookies, Yoda, Jabba the Hut, and other Star Wars characters. The park wasn't an amusement park with rides but wilderness and new habitats. He had a blast!

Bountiful Harvest: We have harvested apricots, tomatoes, apples, and grapes from our yard. This is huge. So last week I processed the food. (Yes Uncle Eric here comes the canning report.....) Apricot jam was made with an ice cream bucket full of apricots. The others were eaten or put into an apricot pie. We made about 6 quarts of applesauce total and are eating it fresh. The tomatoes are paired with basil (basil grows like a weed here in the summer) which are so yummy.

With the 55 pounds of grapes, we yielded 2 3/4 gallons grape juice. The grape juice took the longest. One afternoon/evening to make the juice and another afternoon to strain and can it. It is sure pretty in the jars.

Night Wings: Saturday evening Sweetheart took the boys to the Pima Air and Space Museum. The museum had set up children's activities from 5-9 pm. They saw an example of the Boeing 787, played at the controls of a 737, tasted astronaut ice cream, sit in the cock pit of a jet fighter, drew pictures, and looked at airplanes. I was processing grapes. :)

Adoption: In the state of Arizona, applicants for adoption must be pre-approved before starting the process of actively looking/asking to birth parents if they would think a family would be a good place for their child to live. We completed this process this last week. We will hear hopefully from a judge by the end of July. Our case worker believes there will be no issues. We are asking for your help. We've never felt that our family was complete and believe that we must try each avenue. If you know of a birth parents that are considering adoption, will you consider connecting us with them? We don't know what the future holds and are very hopeful.

Be Well.