Thirty-five pounds of Apples, three dogs, and a rainy day

Today was a really busy day. I made a trip up to Biddeford, ME (about an hour away) with Tyler. While I did that Mike went to Home Depot, and bought grout sealer for the laundry room, then to our local orchard and picked up the two bushels of apples we reserved, and came home. He sealed the floor and finished up just about as I got back home. We started working on one bushel of apples. 35+ pounds of apple per bushel. We currently have a turkey fryer sized pot on the stove full of apples cooking down into applesauce. We also have another 35+ pounds worth of apples sitting in our living room and I have no idea what to do next. I'm thinking spiced apple rings, or wedges, or maybe some cranberry apple relish.

Chopping, and coring 35 pounds of apples is not easy, or fast...especially when you are trying to do it while dodging three dogs that have glued themselves to your feet trying to catch every crumb that hits the floor. After almost tripping over them twice, I put a chair, and the trash can, blocking them out of the part of the kitchen I was in. Dewey...the little brat that he is, realized he could fit under the chair. So after he did that a couple times, I blocked off that\ bottom part of the chair with a laundry basket turned on it it's side. Mike and I were able to work in relative peace for about 20 minutes. Then all the sudden there was a huge commotion and the laundry basket was hopping across the kitchen floor with a panicked Dewey trapped under it. Mike and I were laugh so hard, we never even managed to make it over there to help him get out...he just kept jumping trying to run away from the laundry basket and it kept following him of course, but eventually it fell off. So funny. At that point he was so embarrassed that he didn't come back over near us for a while.

I have to say, I'm pretty impressed with us. We even broke out the juicer and juiced the cores and it was enough apple juice for us each to have a glass (so yummy) and to put some juice in with the apples so they wouldn't burn. then I took all the juice gunk and put that in a pot with some water and I'm cooking it down. I think I'm going to strain it with cheese cloth, and see if I can use one of my pectin packets and add some sugar to make apple jelly out of it. If I can reduce the amount of waste on 35 pounds of apples to the size of grapefruit, I'll be happy :)

I'm going to re-can the peaches from two years ago too. I'm thinking about making a peach chutney with it and canning that. We just haven't eaten up those peach halves like I thought we would. They are still yummy, but I want to put them in something we'll use more.

Tyler's Birth Family

We heard from Ty's Birth mom tonight. She got the letter and pictures I sent on Monday, and was just thrilled with them. She can't believe how big he is getting (that makes two of us!), and how alert he is. If there is 1 comment we ALWAYS get about him it's is, "Wow, he's so alert!" Actually first they say how cute he is, and then how alert his is for his age. They have been saying that since he was 5 days old...I told her all about how well he was eating, and sleeping, and how much he loved the dogs and how much Dewey loves him. She did tell her family about Ty and the adoption, and they were all very supportive and happy to see the pictures of him. I'm so glad she finally got that out in the open and she has the support she needs from her family now. I guess Ty's birth sister who is 6 asked if she could write to us, and I told her that was fine. That should be interesting, I'm not sure what 6 year olds write about!

Ty was Mr. Smiles today. He watches us more and more and does the big open mouth smiles, and smirks when we act silly to him. It makes my heart melt....