Tomatoes

          When I begin a task I have one goal in mind, "finish as soon as possible, no matter what it takes." That mantra has been quite profitable at times and other times, I push myself to the limit and pay for it later. Dean said he thinks I should have learned to pace myself by now but I told him it's hard to teach an old dog new tricks. Anyway this week we did tomatoes and more tomatoes.

   Tristan wasn't home so Kiana and I juiced them ourselves. We used an electric juicer and I allowed Kiana to push the tomatoes through. When we began working she told me, "This is the best day ever, cause I get to help, usually I have to stand and watch while Tristan puts the tomatoes in." After a few hours, her tune changed to, "When will we be done? May I take another break?"

   Kiana, Joseph and Lia  carried all the jars up from the basement. I canned 50 quarts of tomato soup and 40 quarts of juice, so they made a lot of trips up and down the stairs. I had to smile at their sense of accomplishment. They couldn't wait to tell daddy all about it when he came home.

                              

   This morning I canned 49 pints of pizza sauce using the juice I had leftover from making soup. I still had some juice to use up after I made pizza sauce. I was so tired of tomatoes I poured it into jars and got another 10 quarts of juice maybe I won't have to can much next year.

I have discovered my children are much happier when they are busy. Well, I knew that a long time ago but it takes so much extra effort on my part to make sure they keep at their jobs and do them right. Somewhere I read that our goal as parents is to work ourselves out of a job. In other words, take the time to teach your children to work so that eventually, they are able to do anything that needs doing and don't need to wait for mom or dad to get the job done.

   Going for an X Ray is on our agenda for this afternoon. We didn't find the battery Lia swallowed so now we need to make sure it has moved on and hasn't gotten stuck somewhere.