He likes it.

Here is Jonathan eating some delicious rice cereal.

Guess who is 6 months old!

This is how he woke up after getting home from his Dr.'s appt. Poor kid, shots are no fun! We are going to feed him later today. If i can figure it out, i will post the video.

Arizona`

Some of you may know that moving and living in Arizona has not been the easiest thing for me and i told myself that i would limit my complaining about it on this blog. At least i can say that i don't cry anymore when C.W. and i talk about where are kids are going to high school. I think that i have a tentative promise that when C.W. retires, we can move. Stay with me.

It seems that outside of church, most people i know are transplants to Arizona. I can only think of a couple of people that are born and raised here. When i first moved here i was commiserating with this girl about living here. Her advice was to find three things you like and focus on those. I only remember hers as you can swim at midnight and it is nice and the smell of the orange trees when they bloom. Here were my original three:
C.W. was here.
The smell of the orange blossoms.
There are a lot of birds here.
They have evolved throughout the years (yes all 3.5 of them). Here are the different versions of them:
C.W. has a good job.
I work at a showroom that has really great fabric.
I like my job working with Interior Designers.
I see a lot of high end cars i.e. Bentleys, Lotuses/ Loti (?), (I do admit that this one is stupid and it only lasted a few weeks)
And this is the current three:
C.W. has some really great co-workers.
Birds.
The smell of the orange blossoms.
I think that March is the one month that i like, wait, no i don't mind living in Arizona. For those of you not here, there is no describing the smell of the orange tree. The air is heavy with the smell, like it drips off the trees.
We have a house and we have a variety of winged visitors. We even have a hummingbird nest that i can see from the kitchen window. Now this post is long enough. I try to keep'em short with a lot of pictures!

Crank Monster

Of course Jonathan is changing everyday. Two days ago he started making a noise that i sort of thought sounded like an elephant. Cute. Today i have heard that noise almost non-stop and it just sounds like whining to me. Drawing on my vast knowledge (aka the internet), I think Jonathan is teething. At least i hope that is the case. I am wondering if this noise represents his discomfort? I don't know. He is no longer sleeping as well. He is a drool factory. He now is unsettled if he doesn't have his binkie.

On a different note, Jonathan sat on his own today. He has been sitting up but i usually anchor his legs so he doesn't tip over. Not today though! He did it all by himself.

Disclaimer #2

Warning:
There may be extreme bragging and an excessive amount of pictures featuring Jonathan. I can't help myself. It is bound to happen because it is my blog and my son! With that here a a couple of pictures catching you up on his short life.

Getting Started...Again

When i started this blog originally, it was because i was pregnant and thought that i would have something interesting to talk about. So here i am finally pregnant. Actually, i am hopefully on the cusp of giving birth and i haven't really chronicled anything about my pregnancy. Though i have discovered most aspects of pregnancy aren't pretty. I feel like any gross thing that a body can produce is amplified and intensified by pregnancy. Just ask my husband.

So here are some pictures taken by CW's talented co-worker of me pregnant. It was a few weeks ago when i didn't seem as large and swollen as i am now.

canning frenzy

Here is the long and short of my canning history - I can remember being in the kitchen helping both my mother and grandmother bottle fruits, juices and jams.

Last year i bought a box of peaches that were divine. I quickly tried to round up canning equipment to bottle up this goodness but this consisted of asking around to family and co-workers with no luck. So I ended up cutting up the fruit and freezing it. Unfortuneatly the fruit browned a bit and got freezer burn and wasn't very good.

Fast forward to this year. In the middle of september i went to Idaho for much needed mom and sister time. My sister had visited some farms/orchards with some people in the ward and when i got there she was in the middle of canning peaches and pears. It was fun to help out as an adult and i realized that it is not that hard.

I may have mentioned that i joined a food co-op and my first week they had an "offering" of boxes of pears. I decided to take the plunge head first into canning and i bought a box. After i bought the box, i looked around to grocery stores and such buy the equipment. I didn't find what i was looking for so i go to my trusty source - amazon.com. I order the equipment on line. Meanwhile my pears are really getting ripe. So i turn to the internet for solutions. I read that you can bottle fruit without the big pot and rack, without the special tongs that fit around the tops of bottles but it is not so easy. I ended up using my (small) stock pot and putting down 2 washcloths inside the bottom to use as my rack. It was a hot sticky mess but i managed to make spiced pear jam, bottle a few pints of pears, blackberry jam, raspberry jam and wait you say, what happened to the canner that was supposed to be coming in the mail - i didn't do all of this in 1 day. After a week after it was supposed to arrive, i called the company and it turns out they didn't have any stock. So it wasn't until after i called and said something that they refunded our money. I ordered another canner through another vendor and i am happy to say that it arrived. Meanwhile the co-op had another offering of Honey Crisp apples. Those are my favorite apples and are pretty expensive at the store so i bought a box. So with my box of apples and my canner, i made lots of applesauce. yumm!