APPLE BUTTER

It's apple time again! Yeahhhhhh!! Tina picked me three buckets of apples yesterday at a friends house and I started peeling and cutting as soon as we got home. The first run was 34 jars. I'm so excited. I still have a bucket and a half. Lots more to come.
I can hear them sealing from here. Pop, Pop, Pop!!! I love the sound of canning jars sealing. Have I said that before!! LOL

Late Night Visitor

The other night we were just sitting around. I was playing on the computer and Brenda was watching TV in her room. We kept hearing this odd noise and the dogs started to bark toward the front windows. We went to investigate and found this beautiful Regal Moth flying around outside the front of the house.









You can see by the size this is a pretty big specimen. They can get up to 6 inches across. They are one of the largest moths in North America.











As you can see by this picture, the Regal Moth is truly regal. The larval stage is called a Hickory Horned Devil. Although they look quite foreboding, they are actually not mean or dangerous.

Back in the Kitchen..Again! Part Duex

I started making homemade vegetable soup this past week. Danny's sister, Diane, gifted me with bunch of tomatoes, so I started making soup and salsa. So far, I have 40 jars of ready to heat and eat soup and 33 jars of salsa.









I can't wait for the apples and pears to come in. There won't be any plum jelly this
year because the worms got them first. Maybe the birds will eat them. They are
full of protein you know. Ewww, yuck!!

Fourth of July

Hi everyone! It's been a while since I posted on this blog. But a lot has been happening. Sh-h-h
don't tell anyone, I should have been posting about that too. Jamie finished truck driving school and went to work with Prime, Inc. out of Missouri. So now he's on the road all the time. Tina is with him on the truck. She will be coming home soon to start her truck driver training and afterwards she'll be joining him on the truck, team driving.

Ambre and Kojak decided to move back to the coast. Ambre got accepted at Carteret CC in the nursing program and Kojak starts work tomorrow with DirecTV. So that leaves me here alone except that Chris's grandmother is staying with me while we get Ambre's house ready to move into. She will be renting from them. So I do have someone here with me and she is a big help. She makes sure I take my meds ( she's bossy like that! hehe!)

We went out to visit Ambre and family over the fourth of July weekend. Even though they had only been gone a couple of weeks, we were missing them something fierce. Right now they are staying with Kojaks grandmother and looking for a place of their own. Here are a few pics of our adventure.

We were hiding on the little
beach area on the island
when K and Ambre brought
them down. They were
looking like "who are those
strange people over there
taking our pictures. " Then
they realized who it was
and pandemonium broke out.

We stayed near the end of the island at Calico Jacks. You could see the Cape Lookout Lighthouse from the boat docks.

The air was so clear.
You can almost see
the light keepers house
at the base of the light-
house. The light was
turning and I tried to
get a pic and the light
but the only one I was
able to get was blurry.

We went fishing too.
I don't know what that
is that Danny caught.
But Ambre caught this
really cool, toadfish. It
had the tail of an eel
and the head of a cat-
fish w/o whiskers.







Anyway, we had a great time and can't wait to go back
Labor day weekend. Hopefully by that time, they will
be in their own house and we can stay with them. I
would not recommend Calico Jacks. But it is very
beautiful and relaxing there on the island. I would not
mind living there at all.