Productive day...monotonous post

Day One hundred twenty: I'm taking a break from the 30 day challenge today. Don't worry I'll be back to it tomorrow...mostly because I can't not finish something I've started. Well, sometimes I can't. I've had a busy day. I'm still up boiling strawberries into jam. I'm not in the mood to do the details necessary to do day 5.

Plus, it's my blog and I can do what I wanna.

Today started with my final meeting of Study Skills at 8. Afterward, I came home and enjoyed breakfast with my family. Then Jason went to work and Ariel and I headed out to the back yard. I planted our banana peppers, sweet potatoes, and cilantro. Then Ariel and I headed out to find a local farmer's market I had heard about. We didn't stop, but I did (finally) find it. We did stop at Lowe's to see if they had any zucchini. They didn't, so we headed to Kenyon Bailey. I found some pretty plants there for relatively cheap. We brought those home and ate some lunch. Ariel and I then went outside to finish our planting and spend some time in the sandbox (come to think of it, we may be had sandbox time at the earlier time...). Anyhow, now everything is planted, so we came back in and Ariel played a little with her toys. Then she climbed in my lap as if to say, "I think it is nap time." So off she went to my reading, The Little Mermaid. She was out!

While she slept, I took a bath and did some reading from a textbook that I find extremely interesting. Then I got up the WW post about Ariel playing fetch. Soon, Jason was home and we were waking Ariel to go strawberry picking. First stop - sunscreen. We did our picking at Williams Strawberry Farm. Jason and I picked two buckets of strawberry totaling about 23 lbs of deliciousness. Ariel walked around eating strawberries the whole time. I think she ate the whole thing (green parts too) the first time. I quickly realized I needed to help her out a little more (can't believe I missed that concept the first time through). She always had a strawberry in each hand, so she would keep her hands off the plants. She was wonderful and clearly loves strawberries.

We headed home and stopped for gas. I ran into Wal-mart for some freezer jam containers and instant pectin. They only had one pack. I knew I had one more at home. At home, we ate a quick dinner and I worked on strawberries. I made 10 8oz containers and 1 16 oz container of freezer jam with the pectin. We still had too many strawberries. I ran to the store to get more containers and more pectin. Three stores, no pectin. Then I stood in the aisle at Food Lion and googled jam recipes without pectin - and bought lemon juice. At home, I started the next batch of jam. Jason helped chop the rest of the strawberries for freezing whole (and he set aside a few gorgeous ones for us to snack on over the weekend). I got the freezer ones into the freezer for a quick flash freeze. The second batch of jam was more involved as it required boiling to 220 degrees. The steam burnt my poor hands and the splashing jam burnt everything. It sure tastes good though. I ended up with 10 8 oz containers of that jam too. Everything is in the fridge for now...except two in the freezer making sure I didn't overfill them.

All that is left is to put the whole berries into freezer bags and I AM DONE.

Thank you, God, for ful days. Thank you for sunscreen that works for babies. Thank you for strawberries. Thank you for freezers. Thank you for pectin. Thank you for vegetables. Thank you for choices (like choosing not to do the 30 day challenge today). Thank you for fun days with family. Thank you for sandboxes. Thank you for nurseries and healthy plants. Thank you for sleep.



What's this about? I decided on my birthday to make a commitment to being intentionally thankful. I challenged myself to post one thing I am thankful for everyday this year.