Christmas Again!

In the past, we've called it Big Christmas, this annual gathering of my parents and siblings and their spouses and children and grandchildren and whoever else we can get together.  But since sometimes our Little Christmas (our celebration on Christmas Day in which we invite friends to join us for Christmas dinner) ends up having as many people as our Big Christmas, maybe I should find new names.

Well, I'm not going to think about that for too long, because I still have two more blog posts I want to finish today before 2015 begins!  So onward we go, with glimpses into the wonderful big-family Christmas celebration we had together two days ago.

A special guest this year was Aunt Helen, one of my dad's sisters, who was visiting from Chicago.  She showed the boys some fun word games on the computer...

 ...and they taught her how to play Spot-It.

 You'll see throughout these pictures that Moriah was often with my brother David.  It was cute to see how she sought him out.  :)

 I think the cousins were playing Spot-It here, while they waited for dinner to be ready.

 We had 15 around our table...

 ...and later, our number grew to 16 when my sister Donna came by after work.

 Shav and Moriah practiced their parallel backward dives.  ;-)

 My dad helped Tobin put a puzzle together...

 ...and he talked to Isaac and Elizabeth, two of his grandchildren.

 Aunt Helen and my brother got caught up on each other's lives by showing each other pictures online.

 And an epic game of Risk started.  :)

 There was time to relax and sit around and talk...

 ...or chew on bones, if you happened to be a four-legged member of the family...  :)

 ...or snuggle...  :)

 ...or play dolls with Aunt Lori...

...or make paper airplanes with Uncle David (he and Lori gave my kids a fantastic book about how to make various designs of paper airplanes, and my boys have been busy trying out the different ones for the past two days; it's been great!...they also gave us a kit to make our own bouncy balls, but we haven't ventured into that project yet).  :)

 At one point, I peeked into the living room and saw this sweet scene.  I wasn't able to get a great picture of it, but even a poor picture reminds me of the joy of seeing my mother and my daughter together.  :)

 Willow found a comfortable(?) spot under the desk for a nap.

 The Risk game continued.

 My sister and Tobin got their picture taken together.  :)

Elizabeth, Shav, and Isaac threw paper airplanes at each other.  :)

 We ate Oreo Ice Cream Dessert, and the Risk game still went on...

 ...until finally my nephew Jacob won!  Hail, the world-conqueror!  :)

 It's a tradition in our family that whoever wins the game, when one of these long-lasting board games is played, gets to sign and date the board.  If you look closely, you can see Jacob's lasting mark there beside New Guinea (sorry for the blurry photo!).

 Of course we had to attempt a group photo!

Then the goodbyes began.  This picture of Donna and Moriah...

 ...reminded me of this one of those two, taken when Moriah was one day old.  So sweet.  :)

 Big David and Little David posed for pictures...

 ...and then other little children clamored for a turn to have a picture taken with Uncle David!  :)

When final hugs were given and final farewells were said, everyone, but the seven of us, headed out the door, leaving behind that bittersweet feeling that lingers in the air in a house that was so full of bodies and noise and excitement and laughter and is suddenly bereft of them.  There's a let-down, you know?

But thank God for the gift of memories, and for relatives we love so much, and for photographs, and for blog posts that help us remember what our second Christmas celebration of 2014 looked like.

And now, before January 1 comes knocking, I'm bound and determined to finish the post I began about our first Christmas celebration this year!  :)

Wordless Wednesday {Even Willow Likes to Sleep by the Christmas Tree}

Tallying the 2014 Harvest

Every year, as the end of the calendar year draws near, I find myself racing to finish up certain posts that MUST be done before January 1!  :)  This record of our harvest this year is one of those things; and so, continuing in the tradition of 2012 and 2013, here is a list of our 2014 harvest, recorded here so that in years to come, I'll be able to find this information, but also recorded as a way of realizing and appreciating how abundantly God has blessed us.  We say "thank you!!"

As always, I readily acknowledge that my record-keeping may be faulty.  It's entirely possible that I forgot to jot something down along the way; but to the best of my knowledge, this was our harvest.

We ate fresh:
~ Cilantro
~ Green onions
~ Rhubarb
~ Lettuce
~ Strawberries
~ Peas
~ Basil
~ Dill (used to make dill beans, which you'll find in the canning section)  :)
~ Green beans (we first picked these on June 27, which is early for us!)
~ Tomatoes
~ Mulberries (that grew wild)
~ Zucchini
~ Potatoes
~ Corn
~ Tomatillos
~ Bell peppers
~ Habañeros (and maybe other spicy peppers? Jeff would know)  :)
~ Onions
~ Grapes
~ Cantaloupe
~ Watermelon
~ Sweet potatoes

My goodness!  Just looking at that list of foods that grew here in our little corner of the world makes me feel positively rich!  :)

We froze:
~ Strawberry jam: 11 pints (strawberries purchased locally...I discovered this year that, if I used the kind of pectin I prefer, 2 quarts of strawberries yielded about 5 cups of mashed strawberries which, when mixed with 2 cups sugar and 6 tablespoons pectin, equaled 3.25 pints of jam...I'll probably need these measurements next year, so I'm jotting it down here)  :)
~ Cilantro: 23 snack bags
~ Peas: 37 pints, 3 quarts
~ Blueberries: 57.5 pints (purchased through a local fruit market, but they were grown in New Jersey, I believe...we don't usually get this many blueberries, but because the fruit market didn't have sour cherries this year--due to a late frost in Pennsylvania where they're grown, if my memory is right--we got extra blueberries...one thing you learn quickly as a gardener and preserver of food is that you can't count on a harvest every year! when it's a good year for peaches or for tomatoes or for whatever,  you stock up, because the next year you might not get any!)
~ Creamed corn: 45.5 pints (grown by our next-door neighbors and given to us...not only do they give us the corn, they also share the labor of getting it ready to freeze...we are BLESSED by their generosity!)
~ Peaches: 4 pints and 7 quarts (we can most of the peaches we get, but I also like to freeze some)
~ Applesauce: 3 pints (like with the peaches, I only freeze a small percentage of the applesauce we make--often the little bit that is left that I don't find worthwhile to run a whole canner load for!)

We canned:
~ Sweet cherries: 7 quarts (we picked these from the orchard we can see a tiny bit of from the top of our hill...I wanted to get more, but we ran out of time the day we went to pick)
~ Green beans: 30 quarts (I would like to do more next year, because that's not nearly enough to feed us all year!)
~ Dill beans: 9 quarts
~  Radish pods: 1 quart (Jeff had the wild idea to do something with these, since we had them in abundance on a plant that had gone to seed...he looked it up on the internet and discovered that you can pickle them...we haven't opened the jar of pickled radish pods yet to taste them; but based on the amount of labor it took to even get this one quart, I'm guessing I won't be clamoring to make a bunch of this next year!)  ;-)
~ Salsa: 12 half-cups, 14 half-pints, 11 pints, 28 quarts (Jeff gave quite a bit of salsa away this summer, and the smaller jars were perfect for using as gifts)
~ Tomato juice: 18 quarts
~ Tomato puree: 3 quarts
~ Peaches: 49 quarts (from our local orchard...of course, we eat lots of these fresh, too; but we managed to get 49 quarts canned from the 6? bushels we got...I'm not sure about the number of bushels)
~ Hot peppers: 7 half-pints, 2 pints, 2 quarts (like the salsa, this is strictly Jeff's department; we have lots of jars of hot peppers left from years past, so Jeff actually showed a little restraint this year and didn't plant as many pepper plants as he normally does - ha!)  :)
~ Grape juice: 17 half-gallons, 24 quarts (and a half-gallon we drank fresh, which makes a wonderful total of 15 gallons!)
~ Grape jelly: 9 pints, 2 half-pints (this was the first year I made grape jelly, but won't be the last!...it was easier than I thought, and definitely delicious)
~ Applesauce: 62 quarts (I actually made 63, but one jar broke in the canner...the apples were from our local orchard)
~ Venison: 14 quarts (this deer was shot by one of Jeff's customers, who happens to be a fellow officer on the police force)

We dried:
~ Peaches (this was a first and was highly successful...unfortunately, I did not get around to getting any apples dried like I intended, but there's always next year!)  :)

Before I wrap up this list, I'll also mention here that we bagged up 25 bags of leaves.  We store them in our root cellar, then spread them on the garden as mulch after we plant.  I wanted to get even more leaves bagged up, but time ran out and I didn't.  As a matter of fact, there are still quite a few leaves on our lawn, so I suppose I could go out and get some more bags filled; but so far, that task has landed so low on my to-do list that I haven't even seriously considered doing it.  Maybe after the new year?  Live ever in hope, as my mother would say!  :)

I'll add this to that: live ever in gratitude!  When I look at this list, it's easy to do just that!!  :)