Bread & Butter Pickles– (recipe in hungry soup) 8 lbs pickling cucumbers into 8 pints of bread & butter.

We love these just as much as we did last year. YUM.

*eta: Did 13 more pints tonight for a total of 20 for this year.
70lbs pickles, 21 pints bread & butter, 3.5 lbs into relish, 2 quarts and 1 pickle jar into fermented pickles

Peach BBQ sauce (page 263 Bernardin)- This is tasty. We didn’t have any hot pepper flakes so I added some Jack Daniel’s instead and let it cook down a lot. The recipe says it makes 8 half pints but we only got 6. It’s really delicious on chicken and fish!

Pickled Green Beans– (Well Preserved)
We all love these, 9lbs of green beans into 17.5 pints.
Picked green beans at Summer’s Gold u-pick for $1.50/lb

Dilled Carrots (Bernarding) 15lbs of carrots into 13 pints

Sweet Relish (recipe here) double batch made 7 1/4 pints.
This is SO yummy, exactly what I was looking for in a relish.

Corn Relish
16 ears local sweet corn was 12 cups, three small red peppers, one large green, 5-6 on the vine tomatoes.
Recipe made 10 pints exactly.

*this is so yummy we went and got more corn and made a second batch. Next year wait until beginning of September to buy corn, cobs are much bigger (more corn for $).  4 pints, 10 half pints. Added 4 seeded jalapenos to this batch, added flavour but no heat. Husband wants more heat.

Peaches: 18 into Peach Honey Butter (got 8 half pints) I let this cook down a ton, it would have been much tastier if I hadn’t burnt it a little bit.

6 cups into Peach Pie Jam (SB Canning) This is delicious!!! So yummy. Got 7 half pints

Figs

1kg figs into double recipe of strawberry fig jam. This is fantastic!!! Exactly 7 half pints. (recipe here)

Plucots

lots of plucots into plucot jam for my grandad. Made 3 batches of recipe in certo box. Each recipe makes 4 pints. *note: this jam is delicious. Like really good. We never make enough for us.

For a baby who spent the first 6 months of his life *screaming* if a drop of water so much as touched him, someone seems to have had a change of heart.

Playing on a friend’s swingset

I love the idea of all those photo a day for a year challenges. I know there is little chance I would be able to do it for a year but I am going to try and do a picture a day for each day of summer.

We went to a summer solstice carnival put on by our parent link carnival last night. They had all sorts of games and prizes for the kids. There was an amazing face painter there, this picture is Mary seeing what she had on her face:

Oh dear, I’m late!! We had a bit of a rough week but better late than never right?

Still no happy update on your mood. You’re a grouch… it’s just life though.

You finally started crawling!! That was exciting. All this time I thought you would get happier once you could crawl… turns out now you can just follow me and cry.

You are also getting into a lot more trouble. You love the tv, any sort of cord, and getting stuck under kitchen chairs. One night I was tucking in your brother and Mary started calling “mom!! mom!!! Come quick! Alex, don’t move, don’t get down! MOM!!!”
I came running out to find you standing at the couch! Mary was very thrilled that she saw you pull up for the first time. Since then you have become rather good at pulling yourself up and that has added a whole new realm of trouble. You love nothing more than being the center of attention. If someone is holding you and you have a bunch of people smiling at you you are a happy little clam. If I hear “oh, he doesn’t look grouchy to me!” or “your mom says you scream a lot, that can’t be true!” one more time I might snap!

I sure love you little man…. but seriously, I kind of love sleep too. I think you might like it if you would just try.

We are over halfway there now. 7 down, 5 to go. On your first birthday Alex there is going to be a BIG party. Not so much a birthday party as a ‘WE SURVIVED YOUR FIRST YEAR AND YOU’RE STILL ALIVE’ party.

You started sitting independently this month, Mary and Luke love sitting and playing with you and bring you lots of toys. You still haven’t quite mastered crawling which really surprises me because you have been up on all fours and rocking for weeks! You do a funny rolling army crawl to get to where you want to go. It’s not very effective yet but we’re not complaining.

One fabulous thing that happened this month is you decided to like the bath!! We put you in the bath ring in the big tub with your siblings and you had a blast!!!

We took you on your first family vacation this month… ha. Learned some valuable lessons!You’re still not very interested in solid food, except in your baby safe feeder of course.

Your brother passed on another lovely cold this month. You stopped nursing entirely for almost 36 hours. We did manage to coax a couple ounces of pedialyte into you but that was it.

You are very anti-bottle for the most part though. I tried to go to a local homeschool for an evening but you wouldn’t touch the milk I pumped for you when daddy offered it to you in a bottle. Stinker.

I love you my little bug!