Wayne and Rebecca Madsen

We wanted to go last Saturday to a you-pick place up on the New Hampshire border, but they told us to wait a week for raspberries. I politely asked for prices on their peaches ($30 for 24lbs) and for raspberries ($3.50 a pint). We were so excited to get some canning done and have homemade jam and home canned peaches. It was on our minds when we made a trip to costco to pick up some things Monday evening, until we stopped at the peaches and raspberries at costco to find that they were the same price -- minus a 3 hour drive to and from the state border. So we picked up 30 lbs of peaches and many pounds of raspberries and strawberries.

And we got home and realized we were missing too many canning supplies to do anything that evening. By the time we got a few more items Tuesday evening, we found that our entire batch of raspberries were ruined from mold. That's what you get for shopping at costco. I drove back to costco, demanded my money back, repurchased the fruit -- double checking every piece for mold -- and raced home to make jam.

Over the course of the next few days, we somehow ran out of everything needed for canning. We went back to the grocery store either 3 or 4 times to get things like sugar, lids, etc. Eventually, when we ran out of jars -- after doing 17 jars of mixed berry jam and as many peaches as we could -- we decided a healthy peach cobbler was the better way (and only way) to eliminate the remaining peaches. So we invited Camilla and Cameron over to enjoy it.

Camilla was also kind enough to come over Tuesday morning to watch Paela while I finalized things like early lesson plans and syllabus. I'm not happy with how little I got done, but I got much more accomplished than I would if Paela needed me for every little thing.

Rebecca had some doctor's visits for shots and tests. Everything is going fine for the pregnancy [passed the glucose test, yay]. We failed to plan anything for our Labor Day weekend -- in part because I start teaching on Tuesday. We did manage to go to a pizza party at Camilla and Victor's place, but it should be a quiet swimming day on Monday.