Canning Peaches & Pears

This was our second year canning peaches and pears.

 We lay all our fruit on our dinning room table to ripen.

 The peaches ripened first.

I love the rich color of the peaches after being canned. 

The pears took a lot longer to ripen. We wanted to get them ripe before we left to go to Hawaii on vacation. So we did the trick where we put them inside brown paper sacks with a ripe banana inside each sack. After one week and the day before we left for Hawaii the pears were ripe enough to can them.

All ready to cook!

 Eleven quarts of pears. Now we'll have yummy canned peaches and pears to eat this winter.

Celebrating Steve's Birthday!

We started celebrating Steve's birthday a few weeks before his actual birthday.

I surprised him with a GoPro camera for his birthday. He was so excited! I love it when I can surprise him.

I gave it to him early so that he could have fun playing with it in the swimming pool during our swim parties. He also used it when he took the priest quorum on their high adventure rafting trip.

 The Sunday before his birthday I made two german chocolate cakes and took them to his Sunday morning meetings.

 

 On Steve's actual birthday we had a swim party! 

 We invited all these fun peeps over to swim and join us in Steve's birthday celebration.

 Our good friend Nancy brought over a delicious chocolate cake. 

Steve taking the first bite!

Happy Birthday Steve! We ALL love you!

The BEST Summer ever for Swim Parties

We have had our swimming pool for 6 years now. And this summer was by far the BEST summer we have had for HOT days! 

Steve was able to sneak away from work to join us for many of our afternoon swim parties. It's great when he can work from home later in the evening to make up his time. 

We invited a lot of families from our ward and neighborhood to join us on those hot days!

 Our nephew Trevor had a job in Eastern Washington selling for the summer. He and two of his friends came to stay overnight with us while they were here visiting Seattle. It was a lot of fun to have them here. We bbq'd hamburgers and had a swim party when they arrived. That evening Brooklyn took them over to the middle school tennis court so they could light tennis balls on fire! What a bunch of CRAZY fun boys! The next morning Steve took them on a tour of Boeing. We wish they could have stayed longer. We had a great time with them.

 One Saturday we had our good friends the Crosby's, William's and Davis's over for a swim/bbq party. It was a lot of fun. The Davis's left before we took this picture. They were getting ready to move to Utah so we're glad they were able to come join us for one last hurrah!

 We made homemade, hand cranked raspberry ice cream a few times this summer. It is always such a yummy treat on a warm summer night.

I love it when our pool is filled with lots of cute little swimmers!

At all our pool parties we serve up rainbow sherbet ice cream cones. It's become a fun LeBaron tradition!

It's the middle of September and we're still swimming! The 7 day forecast looks awesome. So our awesome summer weather continues!

Trip to Nor Cal

In mid August I flew to Sacramento for my nephew Jacobs mission farewell and to visit my parents and brothers and their families. 

Although I love it when my family can travel with me, it's always fun when I get to go home to visit my parents.

While I was there we went out to dinner a couple of times, to see the movie "The Hundred Foot Journey", shopping, swimming, out for breakfast and to my brother's houses for family dinners.

 I got to go on an early morning bike ride with my dad three days while I was there. We rode 7 miles each day for about an hour. It was so much fun. 

 Saturday night Gregg and Pat invited us to go to an outdoor concert with them. The theme for the concert that night was DISCO! Ya baby! Brought back a lot of memories swaying back and forth to the good old days way back when!  

 Sunday was Jacobs mission farewell. He did a fantastic job on his talk. I am so very proud of him. He will be serving for two years in Guatemala City, Guatemala. He will be an outstanding missionary as he shares the gospel with the people in Guatemala.