Family Visits

It was a party weekend at Calvin Crest! The Nickells came up Saturday and spent the night, then Dad and Mom came up Sunday. I got off work at 3pm Saturday and met up with the Nickells and Gists. They were heading down to the lake to ride the paddle boats.

We stopped in the middle of the lake and pulled our boats together for a snack.

The next morning, Sunday, we all gathered at Jonah and Michelle's house for pancakes with the blackberry and peach syrups Josh and I made, yum!

Josh and I had to work, but we met up with everyone again for lunch. The Nickells had to leave after that, but Dad and Mom stayed and we got to visit more with them after work. We had dinner together in Oakhurst before they had to head back.

Craving

There was lemon cake served with dinner tonight that at first glance I thought was lemon bar. When I discovered it was cake, I was so disappointed. I couldn't get lemon bars out of my head, so I came home and made some from scratch.

Thorns and Spines

We had a berry picking event Thursday morning. Josh, Michelle, Rachel, Katie and I braved the thorns and waded into the brambles in search of blackberries. We picked for about an hour and a half. The end result was scraped arms, stuck fingers, and lots of delicious berries.

Josh, Katie, Michelle, and Rachel

Josh and I had another berry picking adventure this morning. We went searching for gooseberries. Not only do the plants have thorns, but the berries themselves are covered in spines. However, we quickly got a technique down that allowed us to pick them with minimal injury.

You may be wondering what we are going to do with all these berries; don't worry, you'll soon find out.

Earl Grey Peach Jam

The guest group we had this past weekend left us a box of peaches, so Rachel and I put some of them to good use this morning making Earl Grey Peach jam. First, we pitted, peeled, and cut the fruit.

Then we mixed it together with the pectin, tea, and lemon juice and cooked it on the stove, adding the sugar after it came to a full rolling boil.

After cooking it for a minute, we ladled it into jars. Heather made Earl Grey Nectarine jam this summer and it has been a favorite, so I'm pretty excited about this batch.

Visiting Home

Joshua and I both had Monday and Tuesday off this week, so we made a trip to Visalia to visit my family. It worked out great because Heather and the kids spent Monday night at my parents' house too, so we had a great time hanging out together and eating lots of good food. 

 

Tuesday morning we helped the kids work on their seed collections.

Evan and Micah climbed in the tree so they could reach the seeds better.

Josh and Evan found grapefruit seeds and ate the fruit. We also went swimming, played Legos, ate, talked, ate some more. It was a wonderful couple days.

Blackberry Syrup

Our next cooking project was making blackberry syrup. I more or less followed the directions Heather gave on her blog and it was easy and turned out great. We just boiled the berries until they were soft, strained them, added sugar and lemon juice, cooked it for 5 minutes at a full rolling boil, and then canned it in our clean jars.

We ended up with 6 pints of blackberry syrup.

The next morning we invited Ben, Rachel, Jonah and Michelle over for breakfast. Joshua and I made pancakes and served them with our freshly made syrup; it was delicious.

We Found It

Joshua and I both had today off, so we decided to try to find Iron Lakes again. This time, we found the trailhead; at least one of us was excited.

 Our first view of Iron Lakes coming over the hill.

 It was beautiful.

We had a picnic lunch by the lake, then we swam in the lake. Not for long of course; it was cold. But we got in and it was refreshing.

 While we were drying off, it started to rain!

It started coming down pretty hard, so we took shelter under a log. None too soon either, since it started hailing.

 Before too long, we had sun again, although there were still a lot of clouds and it was chilly.

We returned to the car and as we got there, it started sprinkling again. We had a beautiful drive back to camp in the rain.