And the award for the best big brother goes to ....

Tuesday I needed to make a quick trip to the grocery store. I had to pick up Hannah from a friends house and ended up going to a store that I don't get to very often. I love the produce at this store because it is the cheapest around and tends to be fresher than other stores. I decided to see if Strawberries were on sale and found that sure enough they were $4.99 a flat. WOO HOO!! Strawberry Jam here we come.

I spent all day Wednesday making jam from 17, get that 17 flats of strawberries. The children home pitched in and helped. I had Olivia, Malia, Emma, and Creed as helpers. We washed, cut, blended and stirred our way to 101 quarts of low sugar freezer jam. It is so exciting to see all the jam.

Last year I missed the sales on strawberries so we only had a few jars left for an entire year. The family really likes this jam and won't eat any other jam I have made or bought. We dug through the freezer a couple weeks ago and found some jars that had gotten burried. I then had to make rolls to go with our treasure.

I was so excited to be able to start my canning for the year. We spent the entire day processing strawberries, outside of picking children up from school and being interupted with school needs. When we got done there was a huge sticky strawberry mess with large bowls spread all over the kitchen. As we sat at the table for a dinner of home made bread and jam (requested by the children) Doug said, "What a great site" I had to ask what he meant thinking possibly he was being sarcastic about the mess. (You'll notice just a little bit of the mess in the picture.)But no he meant how grateful he was for all the jam. That was worth every minute and all the stains.

So about the award.

And the award for the best big brother goes to CREED!!

Why Creed? Well, he ground all the berries while wearing my worn broken apron covered in strawberries. He kept asking if he would have pink hands for a week. He patiently listened to Malia's Barbie Diamond Castle CD and we 4 girls sang to our hearts content without hearing one complaint. It gets better, the music was playing from HIS IPod. How many teenage boys have a Barbie CD on their IPod's? I had asked him to download it so Malia could listen on a specific stereo. He is such a great brother and I sure love him! I'm just glad that he likes the music from Tangled because that is also a favorite. He even sings with us.





We still have 1/2 a shelf left in this freezer. We always manage to fit things on top of and around the jam. It is sooo worth it.








This portion of the post is dedicated to Melanie.

You Know You Have a Big Family When..... You need to make over 100 quarts of jam to get you through the year.