Three Graduations!

This year we had three graduations; 4th grade, 8th grade and kindergarten!  On Thursday, June 22nd, Bronwyn graduated from 4th grade.  Next year she will be in middle school.

Bridger got really enthused about clapping for every student, and copied/repeated most of their names, too!  I had a video of him, but apparently it doesn't want to load correctly, because it says an error occurred when I click on it.

On Friday morning, Clayton graduated from 8th grade.  Next year he will go to BGHS.  They had a nautical theme.

Here he is walking in.

After the program.

He's not looking, but a good picture of him :)

 After Clayton's graduation, we went to the primary school, where Morgan was graduating.  I think her teacher was in the process of moving her tassel to the other side here.

Her teacher dressed them up ahead of time in cap and gown and had a photographer friend come in and get good pictures of each of them.  These were in their "diplomas".

Friday night to celebrate, we went to Rocky's for dinner.  Lovely, kindhearted Tara decided since we had three graduations, we should have a graduation party later that night.  She bought a pie for us.

The graduates each got some candy, a squirt gun and a dollar.

They were very excited graduates :)

Strawberries

After a 6 month or so absence, I'm back again :)  Today as we were doing strawberries I decided to snap a few pictures and do a quick post.

I picked up 10 half flats of strawberries this morning.  Before that, I picked up 20 packages of pectin!!

I needed to freeze some berries cut up with sugar, but my primary goal was to make a bunch of jam.  This year we ran out in January, I think, and that was way too early.  I've been using the same pectin for 25 years, but a couple years ago the company changed their product.  I really haven't liked how my jam turned out the last couple years.  Yesterday as I was headed to the store, Aimee told me about my sister using a different kind, so I quickly called her.  I bought a package to give it a try.  (I was in the area of the strawberries yesterday and bought a couple half flats for fresh eating, so I had some berries to make into jam.)  I really liked how it turned out and decided to go with something different this year.

Forrest helping out with the pectin.

Tara did lots of stirring.

Yesterday when I made one batch of the jam I didn't think it was any faster than my old kind, but today when we made 20 batches, it went sooo fast!  In less than 2 hours we had 59 pints of freezer jam made.

I'm hoping our jam will last til the berries are ready next year but, if not, I did end up freezing some smashed up berries - enough for 12 more pints.  I think this jam will go further because the last couple years the jam was so thick,   This is juicier and easier to spread.

We froze 6 quarts of whole berries and 13 quarts of cut up and sugared berries, too.

One afternoon and we're all done with our strawberries for the year :)  Well, except, we need to buy some more so we can make a couple pies!!  I never like to get involved in pie making when I have so many berries to get put up.  And then, when I need to make gluten free, too, it's more of a project, so we'll put it off til next week.

I hope you all have a nice week(end) and get some good fresh berries!