Food Storage

Let me warn you right off, there are NO pictures in this post. I know what you're thinking...BORING!! I, too, love to see pictures on peoples blogs too. My first thought last night when I started canning at the Ogden Cannery was "Why didn't I bring my camera??" As soon as I walked in the canning room (a.k.a. operating room - that's what it looked like to me) I saw my father-in-law standing there in a hair net (surgery hat) and blue gloves sealing #10 cans just as fast as he could. It was a hoot! Anyway, this post is about food storage.

Recently I have really been thinking seriously about how badly we need food storage - especially with the high gas prices, failing economy, etc. So....I started out by ordering a few things through the church to "start out" my food storage. Dean and I kinda laughed thinking "Well if everything goes to hell we'll at least have those dehydrated hashbrowns, pancake mix and honey to munch on." haha

My brother-in-law Brent and his wife Jodi told us they had scheduled a time at the cannery for our families to go and work/buy food storage. I thought to myself, "Cool!" As I mentioned, I really wanted to get a start on our food storage. So I pulled up the food at providenceliving.org and decided what items I wanted to can. Honestly I had NO clue what to pick and why, luckily Jodi gave me some advice on what to get.

So....last night while Grandma Judy watched Lindy and Brent & Jodi's kids - me, Lynn, and Brent and Jodi went and canned. Dean had to work so he didn't get the pleasure of the "factory work." It was SO fun! Of course I ended up adding more to my list than I had originally planned and walked out of there $165.00 later - but I now have a good start to our food storage. I couldn't help but think (resembling LaVerne from Laverene and Shirley) when I was canning just how wonderful our Church is and the great programs and opportunities we have to prepare our families for not only world disasters but for our own benefit as a family should someone get sick or injured or lose a job.

To sum it all up, it was a great night and I left with a feeling of gratitude for the opportunity to store food for my family and to share the experience with family and friends!

Labor Day Campout With Friends!

It's SO hard to believe that it's already September, however when I was waiting at the station for the train this morning (I ride Front Runner to Salt Lake & back) it was VERY chilly and I didn't have a sweater on. I have to admit, I LOVE Fall - everything about it! Summer is great but I cannot stand the heat - you know the kind, where you don't even want to sit outside and enjoy the summer. So....I am looking forward to Fall.

Since my last update we've been busy with everyday stuff - work and raising our beautiful Lindy. We've had a few camping trips to wrap up the season - this last weekend we went for Labor Day weekend with some of my friends and their families. Since we girls get together at least once a year for a weekend we decided to do a campout with our families too and we had a BLAST!

We went up Kanosh canyon and camped for three nights. The weather was perfect, although the last night it rained off and on throughout the night which made for a soggy day to clean up camp and head for home. Between the three of us - me, Brandy and Lisa - we had 11 kids, eight of which were boys! I took Cheryl's three boys with us so that made a full trailer for us. The kids absolutely had the BEST time. For me it was so nice to just have a few relaxing days in the great 'ol outdoors with my little family and some great friends. One of my most favorite parts was to watch how much fun the kids had. The older kids (ranging from 4 - 10 years old) were all boys so you cam imagine how much fun they had being in the "woods" as our nephew Carson called it. There we a lot of other campers nearby and our 7 boys declared war on some of the neighbor camps after their kids "stole some of our wood." Our boys were bound and determined to get our wood back and prevent other attacks! LOL

As I watched the boys play I thought about how fun it would have been to go camping as a kid. The outdoors is a kids playground and it stirs up their imaginations. I want some of Lindy's best memories as a kid to be our family camping trips. As always Dean was a good sport, especially since we had three extra kids with us. Derek, Garrett & Carson were SO good and brought a lot of smiles and laughs to us all. Lindy loved it and wanted to be one of the big kids and was DIRTY from the moment she stepped out of the trailer.

Thanks to the Jense's and Teeples' for such a fun and successful camping trip! Also, Taunie we are SO glad you came up to visit for a little while on Sunday, we wish you could have stayed longer! Next year we hope to add a few more of our friends, we'll just have to go on a non-holiday weekend.

Enjoy the pictures! :)