Sweet Labors

Part 1

After almost 20 years of marriage, Glen and I have established many traditions in our family.  Some, like our Christmas traditions, are pretty run-of-the-mill.  On Christmas Eve, for example, we have our Christmas devotional,  then we open our pajamas, put out cookies for Santa, and send the kids to bed.  

 Other traditions, like Glen making a special crepe breakfast for everyone's birthdays and the kids making a candy bar note for Glen on Father's Day,  are a little more uniquely ours.  

I don't even remember how they started, but I'm assuming it happened once and when the next birthday or Father's Day rolled around, someone said, "That was fun! Let's do it again!"

After reflecting back, I think that's exactly how our Labor Day tradition of going raspberry picking started.  We did it one year and in future years realized that Labor Day always seems to be right in the heart of raspberry season and that it was fun not to have to wonder what fun thing we should do with Daddy at home for the day!

This year, as always, we went with grand intentions of picking enough berries to make several batches of raspberry jam afterward.  We had invited friends to join us and were immediately disappointed (and a little embarrassed) when we arrived and realized that the picking was not going to be good. 

The raspberries were very picked over... 

and what few we got tended to be a little mushy and bug-filled.  After picking in the hot sun for about 45 minutes, we barely had half a bucketful. 

After resigning myself to the fact that I wouldn't be able to make jam this year,  someone had the idea of trying out the blackberry field to see if it was any better picking.  

On the way to the blackberries, we noticed the farm workers changing where the raspberry sign pointed to.  They were opening a new field! 

We rushed and were some of the first to arrive to fields bursting with perfectly ripe and beautiful raspberries! 

Within half an hour, we had about 10x more berries than we'd collected in the other field...

 and as was immediately noticed by the kids, they were also much sweeter and juicier berries!

We were happy that it ended well and were glad to have shared the day with friends

and critters alike.  :) 

Now we are enjoying the fruits of our labors with lots of jam on homemade bread!

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Part 2: 

This isn't a tradition for us (yet), but this year we also went peach picking on the Saturday of Labor Day weekend.  We went to Charlottesville early before the BYU game and the tailgating party just so we could go to the beautiful Carter Mountain Orchards.

When my sister, H, was a law student at UVA, she introduced to this gorgeous farm situated on top of a mountain overlooking Charlottesville.  We like going there as much for the views as for the plenteous fruits!  Our peaches did not look very pretty after sitting in the hot car for an entire day, but we still managed to eat a bunch and make a batch of half-peach/half-raspberry jam!


All in all, other than BYU's disappointing loss, it was a sweet Labor Day weekend spent making memories and enjoying time with family and friends!


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Birth Order and Picture Taking

When I was a kid I loved perusing the pages of mine and my siblings' baby books.

Being the oldest in the family, mine was full of cute photos of me and  interesting tidbits from my early years. 

Did you know that Spencer W. Kimball (the modern day prophet at the time) tickled me and called me, "Angel" when I was a baby?  Although I was far too young to remember it happening, it was meaningful enough to read that it happened that we named our first son after him. 

I learned from reading my next younger brother's baby book that the first sentence he ever uttered was, "Lara did it."  While he was probably telling the truth about who did it, I used to tease him mercilessly for blaming me for everything from the moment he could talk. 

After that brother, though, the stories start getting pretty sparse.  By the time the eighth child rolled around my parents didn't go much past writing his name and birthdate in his baby book.    Baby pictures of him are few and far between.

In our family it's a bit different.  We have quite a few pictures of Spencer and Cami, then sometime before Emma was born our camera broke.  Digital cameras were still a bit on the pricy side and we didn't want another film camera, so we went without a camera at all for a couple of years.   All of the pictures we have from those first couple years of Emma's life were taken by other people. 

Eventually we got our first bottom-of-the-line digital camera and picture taking resumed again.  Baby pictures of Adam are poor quality, but plentiful.  Then I discovered blogging, got a better camera, and unlike my "baby brother",  Ellie is  by far the most photographed of all of our kids.  

So it shouldn't have surprised me too much, when we finally went raspberry picking on Labor Day when I uploaded the pictures from our Labor Day raspberry picking adventures that I found one picture of Emma with her friend Elena...

 and the rest were of Ellie.  

Perhaps I should feel guilty for not being better about photographing everyone...

but then again there's no one else who still happily and willingly poses for my pictures anymore.  

Except the raspberry jam I made yesterday afternoon...


it not only willingly submitted to me taking endless pictures of it, but it also allowed me to spread it over homemade bread for the berry best treat ever! 

And with that bit of cheesiness, I think I shall go to bed now or  I'm going to be in a real jam come tomorrow morning!