Amy's Apple Butter

15 apples, peeled, cored, cut into small pieces **
3 cups of sugar
2 Tbsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp cloves
1/2 cup orange juice
1/2 tsp salt

**You can use any type of sweet apple for this. I've used Gala, Jonagold and Red Delicious in the past and they all turned out delicious.

How to make apple butter with a toddler:

Wash apples.


Peel and core apples. Wish you had bought an apple/peeler/corer/slicer from Pampered Chef. You were a consultant, for crying out loud!!! You DEFINITELY should have invested in this.


Find sippy cup. Fill with milk. Turn on cartoons and return to apples. Chop apples. LOTS of apples. Chop so many apples you begin to wish you had never gone to the apple butter festival and decided "Hey, that's not so hard. I can do that. I can make LOTS of apple butter." Wish you had never even seen an apple in your life. Continue chopping apples. Finish chopping apples and place in two crock pots.

Find missing puzzle piece. Watch little one work puzzle 3 times. Return to apples. Watch as toddler climbs up on bar stool so he can "help".


And help.


And help.




Still helping.

And helping himself to some apples.


Add orange juice, sugar, salt, cinnamon and cloves.




Clean up kitchen while sweet little apple-filled toddler plays cars under your feet.
Put toddler to bed and then put yourself to bed because it's been a LONG day!

During the night, cook down apples until thick and reduced by half.


In the morning, feed toddler breakfast. While he's busy in his highchair, blend apples and juice in several batches in your blender because you do not have a fancy schmancy immersion blender. Pray that Santa reads your blog and brings you an apple/peeler/corer/slicer and an immersion blender for Christmas so you never have to do this much work to make apple butter again.


Remove toddler from highchair. Wash his hands and then your hands and then help him find something to do. Return to kitchen. Ladle apple butter into hot, sterilized jars. (Thank goodness for the dishwasher w/the heated dry cycle!)


Process in hot water bath for 20 minutes.

During this, play cars, sing Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, read Goodnight Moon and change diaper. Remove jars from canner and allow to cool. Congratulations! You've just spent approximately $25 and the better part of two days making 7 pints of apple butter. Taste finished product and realize you must have only added 2 of the three cups of sugar. Scream. A lot. Decide if people love you they'll eat the danged apple butter and love it or at least pretty please do not tell you it needs more sugar. :)

We had dinner and cake and ice cream for Easton's birthday tonight. We were planning a party but we all got some kind of bug so we'll have to postpone it. Everyone here is feeling better but we'll still hold off on the party just to make sure we don't share that with our friends. I'm sure they appreciate that. We sure had fun tonight though! For dinner, I made kid-friendly food: Mummy dogs, Easy Peas-y Mac and Cheese, Scarecrow Taco Dip and a Monkey cake. I'm not the best cake decorator but I think it turned out pretty cute. I could have gotten the lines a little straighter but I think I did pretty well for just using a sandwich bag w/the corner cut off to pipe this icing! Next time though I will definitely invest in some pastry bags and tips so I can do a better job. (Don't know why the pics uploaded in the wrong order but I'm too tired to re-do it.) This first picture cracks me up. He did NOT want to wear the silly birthday hat and really I don't blame him. :)
Happy Birthday, my sunny funny boy!

What an exhausting day today!!! I got up, worked out while I watched the Today show. The kids slept late so I had time to get my coupons ready and get my stuff together. The kids woke up around ten (TEN! Holy cow!). I got everyone fed, dressed and into the car. No big deal so far, right? We made it to Walmart and did lots of shopping. This was no small feat either. Easton was in the front of the cart, Audrey was in the bottom taking up the entire thing with her carseat. This meant I had to put things in my reusable shopping bags and put them under the cart, hang them on my arms, hang them onto the sides of the cart...it was probably really funny looking.

Then all of a sudden Easton had the mother of all meltdowns right in the checkout line. Oh. My. Goodness!!! Kicking and screaming and standing up in the seat of the cart. The checker was ringing up my stuff already otherwise I would have just left the cart with all the stuff and hightailed it out of there. It was that bad. But she was already ringing up my stuff so I decided to try to pay for my stuff and leave. Easton kept screaming and trying to get out of the cart and I was scared to death he was going to fall out of the cart and split his head open right in front of everybody. I tried talking to him, spanking his little butt, threatening him and then finally ignoring him. NOTHING helped. (Yes, Mom and Dad, I am finally getting my payback for all those fits I threw and yes, they really are a *&^$!)

The cashier called someone over to help me out with my stuff because there was no way I could manage to get all that stuff AND a screaming kid out to my car by myself. Thankfully the lady who came over to help me was nice. She was a mom herself so she knew what I was going through. Once we got out to the car, I put Easton in the car (not even in his car seat yet) so he could chill out and shut the door while I loaded the stuff into the trunk. By the time I was done, he had calmed down completely and suddenly my sweet, sunny funny boy was back like nothing had ever happened. Little stinker!!!

Then I went to change his diaper. Worst possible dirty diaper. Of course! No big deal. I can handle this. I changed the dirty diaper, got him buckled into his seat. By tthen, Audrey was screaming and I knew it was time for a bottle. I went to make her a bottle and...no bottled water in the diaper bag!! What the heck?! OK. No big deal. I unbuckled E from his car seat, locked Audrey into the car. (I was in the closest parking place and could see Audrey from where I was going.) and Easton and I walked up to the vending machine to buy a bottle of water. We got the water, buckled E back into his seat, made the bottle and realized Audrey was crying because she had a dirty diaper. I got her ready, reached for a wipe. NO MORE WIPES!!! AARRGGHH!!! I rummaged around in the console and found some napkins. She wasn't coming clean with just the cheap napkins so I had to wet them with the water I had just bought. WOWEE!!! Can you even imagine the shock on that poor girls' bottom! lol I finished with the diaper change with Audrey screaming her little head off. I calmed her down, gave her the bottle and we all just chilled out while she finished. WHEW!

Then Easton decided we all needed lunch. By then it was 3:30 and we’d been shopping at Walmart for THREE hours! We got Easton “unch” at Sonic and then we went to the grocery store for a couple of items that were on sale there cheaper than Walmart. On the way to Martin’s, Easton requested a song. He said “Brick House, mama. Brick House”. I had to laugh. OK, little man. 70’s funk it is. He loves that song and Lowrider. I didn’t realize how intently he was listening to the words until he said “36”. (The part where the guy says 36, 24, 36.) And Easton kept saying Brick House. Brick House. Oh my goodness, it was just the comedy relief I needed. Here ya go. One of Easton's favorite songs right now:



We had an uneventful trip to Martin’s except for the part where it was pouring down rain when we came out of the store. Luckily, Jason called and was close by so he came to help me get the groceries and the kids into the car in the pouring rain. I rewarded myself (and Jason) for our hard work by buying us some coffee. We came home, got the kids in bed, had grilled cheese, tomato soup and beer for dinner vegged on the couch for the rest of the night. What a day!!!<

We're rededicating ourselves to getting into shape. I HATE getting up early but we can't seem to work it in any other time so we're gonna try getting up at 5:15 tomorrow so we can get in 30 minutes or so before breakfast and getting our day started. We're also starting a 30 minutes a day of cleaning in the evenings. We set the timer on the microwave and clean for 30 minutes. We do as much as we can within that time and then when the timer goes off we're done. It's amazing how much you can get done in that short amount of time and how much of a difference it makes in making your house look better. An hour a day to a better life. he he That sounds like a great idea for a book. :)

Boy, it is really feeling more like WINTER than Fall here lately! I'm glad I get to wear my red wool coat but not at all glad that it's cold. That makes no sense but I do love that red coat. :) I'm freezing. We're supposed to get our first freeze tonight. Down to around 31!!! Holy cow, that's cold! My hands are like icicles as I'm trying to type this. I think I need some hot tea and a warm bath to warm up.

In other news, it's apple butter time around here. I've already made (and blogged about????) one batch of apple butter. I'm proud I (mostly) got over my fear of canning. All that hot water and glass and boiling apple butter...yikes!!! But I did it and it turned out great so I'm going to get together with two of my friends and make about a bushel's worth of apples into apple buttter. Should be an all day deal but I'm really looking forward to it.

I got an A in my Nutrition for Education class. I got the maximum amount of points on my final Power Poing presentation and got a 99% in the class! Do I wish I'd gotten that one extra point so I could have had 100? Heck, no! I was just thrilled to get what I did! Only 10 more classes to go til graduation!!! Hmmm...maybe I could get a new car for graduation! Our Malibu will be paid off around then and we DO need a bigger car now that we've got 2 little ones. What do you say, honey? :)

Today Easton decided to take the straw out of a cup of water he was drinking out of and play with it. He ended up scratching his eye with the straw. Now it's really red and irritated and he keeps blinking his eyes and rubbing at it. I'm easily grossed out about eye things because of all the gross eye stuff I've been through so I could barely look at it without feeling like I was gonna throw up. Poor baby! Audrey's got a check up tomorrow and I might call ahead and ask if the doctor can take a look at E's eye just to be safe.

Audrey's getting shots tomorrow. I HATE taking my kids to get shots!!! I made Jason go with me and hold Easton down one time just to see how awful it is. Not very nice of me I know but should I get to have all the fun? He was coming with me to the appointment already anyways so I just thought I'd share. You're welcome, honey. Now he knows why I am all teary-eyed when I come home from the doctor's appointments. Ugh! I hate that!

Today we did about 5 loads of laundry. Who knew it could take so stinkin long to fold a load of kid's clothes?!?!

That's about it for us. Nothing too exciting. Gotta get off of here and make some tea. I'm FREEZING!!!

(Santa, if you read my blog I could sure use some soft, fuzzy socks and a new pair of warm houseshoes, OK? All my fuzzy socks are really getting worn out and I had to trash my slippers because I'd worn a hole right through the bottom of both of them. Thanks! P.S. Sorry I didn't keep my house as clean as I wanted to but I'm sure with all those elves you understand, right?)

Are you for real? You want me to PAY you to watch my children and you can't even spell? Give me a break!

It is WAY too late right now but it seem like late at night is the only time I can find to update this blog. I miss it!!!


Pictures from playtime with Audrey and Easton.

I couldn't figure out why my candles looked so weird. Then I came into the dining room to find this:

Candle wax doesn't taste so good, does it E?

No thank you. I don't want to taste it.

Putting them back like nothing happened. STINKER!!!

Goin' for a ride.

See the socks on this bear? Easton insisted his bear needed to wear the Lightening McQueen socks. Yes, it's very important that your bear be fully dressed before we leave, buddy. :)

Easton makes Sissy laugh

Busted! Caught red-handed eating WAY too many animal crackers before dinnertime. I was busy changing Audrey and when I came back into the living room this is what I found.

We had a fun and busy day on Sunday. We went to the pumpkin patch and the apple butter festival. It was a long day but we all had fun. I had hoped to get some better pictures than this but it just wasn't a good day for pictures. Everyone looks cranky! They weren't but because it was sunny everyone is squinting and looking mad. :) Oh well!

Jumbo's Pumpkin Patch 2009

Easton in the "tractor"

Sheep

Easton says hi to a goat

Pigs eating pumpkin

I don't think they liked this too much. :)

Easton and Daddy playing on the hay

E didn't like the feel of hay too much. Can you tell he's not a farm kid?

Farmer E

My little pumpkin

Daddy and his kiddos on the hayride

Audrey and Mama

Pumpkin patch

Easton wasn't too sure about this pumpkin pickin'

Uh oh! He is THROUGH taking pictures. And I don't look so happy about it either.

What a sweetie!

We all look tired and ready to go home in this picture.

See? Audrey's already takin' a nap. Smart girl!

This is our one and only picture of the apple butter festival. The man in this picture is reaching down in the huge vat of boiling hot apple butter to stir it.

He's not really putting his hand into it, it just looks like it in this picture. He's really holding onto a huge wooden stick to stir the hot apple butter to keep it from sticking.

Man, it sure smelled good!