This week was pretty uneventful and quiet.  A time to take a breather after all the camping activity.  The boys went on a deer hunt that produced nothing.  They decided to come home when they ran out of food.  I thought that was smart. 🙂 We went to a surprise birthday party… that actually ended up being a surprise which is always nice when you plan for it to be. And that sums up the week.  Pretty short, eh?  See ya tomorrow.

Elk Hunting Camp 2010 – Part I Here’s Part II of our Elk Hunting Camp.  On Sunday morning, no one hunts and we have a morning church service at our Church in the Wildwood.  It’s always a lovely time with the breeze blowing through the trees and having nature around you.  We always have a brunch about 10.  We do this so that we can give the hunters a chance to rest since they’ve been getting up very early the other days.  It also gives us time for the weather to warm since its in the lower 30’s at before daybreak.  We had a beautiful spread.  This is just a portion of what was offered. …

I survived. Elk Camp lasted an entire week for some of us and that included our family. It was a delightful time albeit a bit hectic for me. There were a lot of campers this year. More campers than hunters. A few days there were 97 of us (including all children and babies). That’s a lot of people in the woods! I organize all the evening meals so that there is some cohesiveness to the group. Breakfast and lunches everyone plans and eats on their own.  Anyways, back to our shared evening meals.  The first night is soup night. Everyone brings a pot of their soup that is enough for their family.…

Remember those 400 lbs. of apples I told you we picked?  Well this past week was spent trying to use them up.  The easiest part was the picking of the apples.  So beware, if good fortune should come your way and someone offers you all the apples you want for free, remember… the easiest part of apples is the picking! If you haven’t realized it yet, we do believe in child labor encourage all our children to help. More apples. After juicing 9 1/2 gallons and coring 45lbs of apples, Zachary’s starting to get sick of seeing them.  Serenity’s not looking too thrilled either. But then… in the middle of all this…

Last week we had the opportunity to pick as many apples as we wanted. I talked about making apple gift baskets here. For some reason the Garden of Eden comes to mind when I look at this picture. Would a few extra arms be useful? The start of some apple turnovers from my budding cook, Serenity. Another use for apples… Juice Zachary came up with a few of his own “special” recipes using no recipe. Wrapping up our week, we made a trip to Tucson where Serenity was able to attend a tea party. My friend did a beautiful job. The food was very delicious and looked lovely. More recipes…