Is there a little Hobbit in you?

As I sat yesterday feeding Logan yet again, I realized my son eats like a Hobbit! He enjoys breakfast (4am), second breakfast (7am), elevensies (10am), lunchon (1pm), afternoon tea (4pm), dinner (7pm), supper (10pm), midnight snack (1am), and sometimes even  more frequent meals!

He tends to eat non stop for 45 minutes to an hour. I can't believe how much time I spend feeding him. AND if he falls asleep or is in any way distracted during feeding, it takes even longer for him to eat. So he not only eats with the frequency of a hobbit, but also the volumes a Hobbit eats. But he's putting on some lbs, so I won't complain too much. I love that he's getting chubby cheeks. It's too cute.

Today my project is to peel and dry our nectarines. We have a tree that produces fruit, but the skin is less than desirable. Last year it had a hard shell that was tough to bite through, this year it's better, but still not something I would want to bite into. So my solution is to peel and dry the fruit so we can eat it as a snack or put it in granola bars. We'll see how they turn out.

I've been spending my "spare time" working on Brier's baby blanket. I remembered why I'd taken a break on it. I didn't like how part of it was turning out, and after redoing it a few times, I gave up for a while. Now I've decided the frustrating part isn't needed, so I'm doing my best to get the rest of it done this week. It should still be cute when done.

Sunday I'll be teaching Gospel Doctrine for the first time since Logan was born, so we'll see how that goes! It's been nice to have a break, but I've missed teaching. It's so fun to prepare the lessons, lead discussion, and see what I can learn in the process. Last week Logan didn't need to eat during class, although the week before he did. So we'll see if I can delay his 7am feeding long enough so he won't be hungry until class is over at 11. We'll see if my little Hobbit can handle it!

The week of Spaghetti Sauce

This week has been a crazy one! Monday I told myself I'd take a day off to do something fun, and here it is, Thursday and I don't think I'll get a day off this week. Man, being a mom is a lot more work than I thought it would be!

We've been blessed with an abundance of tomatoes in our garden this year! I'm done with the dicing of salsa, and since the tomatoes have kept pouring in, I decided to make Spaghetti Sauce with what we have in the fridge from last week (about a Walmart bag full). 

I used my mom's Italian Spaghetti Sauce recipe, multiplied it by 4, removed the meat (since I don't have a pressure cooker for processing) and added a few ingredients to make it a veggie sauce (carrots, squash, zucchini, mushrooms and purple bell peppers). It made 11 jars worth of sauce. According to Dave it's "not the best sauce you ever made, but probably the second best". 

Our garden is far from being done producing tomatoes, so I may have to do this again! It ended up costing something like 30 or 40 cents a jar to make (because I had all the veggies except the mushrooms, just had to buy that, tomato paste and lids for canning).

Wednesday Heather and Clancy had their baby girl Briar! She's 4 lbs 10 oz and is so cute. She has a little brown hair, and the cutest little face. I've already decided Logan and she will have to be best friends. They're only a month apart, so they'll go through all the stages of childhood together. I started a baby blanket for Briar, and now I HAVE to finish it.

Sunday we took Logan to church for the first time! He did well (ate through Sunday School, and slept the rest of the time). We're planning to have his baby blessing on October 9th, and the bishop is getting everything set up so we can do so.

Logan's been good this week, just eating like crazy and doing his best to catch up with his cousins in the weight department. He's got a ways to go, but he's doing his best!

Sassy Salsa Recipe

For as long as I can remember my Dad has loved two things about summer: working in his garden and making his own salsa. Well, he loved more than just that about summer, but that's what this is going to be about! 


Dad would always make two kinds of salsa. One he called Sweet Salsa because it was more mild and the one us kids liked, and the other he called his Sassy Salsa because it was far more flavorful and had peppers!


Over the past 30 years he's improved his recipe, and this year he gave a copy to Dave and I so we could try our hands at it! Next time we make this, we would add more Bell Pepper and Onions, but the base flavor is FABULOUS! Dave might have already eaten 7 of the 48 jars we made.

Sassy Salsa 13 C. peeled, tomatoes - crushed with blender 2 large sweet peppers(red or green) 2 bell peppers 20 jalapeno peppers - chopped and seeds taken out 3 large chili peppers - chopped and seeds taken out 8 crushed cloves of garlic 1 1/2 c. onions - chopped 4 1/2 teas. salt 3 1/2 c. apple cider vinegar 3 (12 oz) tomato paste

When you're actually making this, you'll have to adapt it to what you had on hand (ex. for our first batch we had 15 cups of tomatoes, so we added a little extra of everything and with our second batch we had 20 cups and ran out of jalapenos, so we substituted with other peppers). But it all works out! Just be creative.

Also, yesterday Logan was officially a month old! I think he's going through a growth spurt because he wants to eat every hour and is pretty fussy if I don't feed him immediately. But he's so cute, although it's exhausting for me, he's worth the work!


He's now 7 lbs 4 oz, which is a lb more than his birth weight of 6 lbs 1 oz. So he's packing it on and doesn't fit in his premie clothes or diapers any more! Just newborn sizes from here on out. Maybe by month 2 he'll actually fit into his 0 - 3 month clothes. He's generally a happy baby. Full of smiles and loves to cuddle.