I survived....barely

Every year my work has an annual convention for our distributors. It always takes place in the fall, and is always a lot of work. This blessed event took place last week. It was fun but busy. I am happy to report that I survived yet another year. This year we had a pajama dance party where the B52's performed. Yes, I did get to meet them (it was very brief). Our guest speaker was Chris Gardner, the guy from the movie Pursuit of Happyness (Will Smith played him). He was probably the best motivational speaker I have ever heard. We launched our charity and were able to raise several thousand dollars and partnered with Operation Smile. I could have done with out the 5 am 5K, but it was for charity. I have committed to run it next year. All in all it was a very successful event with 10,000 very happy distributors, and many tired employees.

At the beginning of last week (before the start of convention) I started getting sick. I was sick the whole week (during convention). Finally on Monday after sleeping the whole day I went to the doctor. Apparently I have a sinus infection that has settled in my chest and into the bones in my sinus cavity. I have been out of work all week, and it has sucked. I have become great friends with my bed, since I have no energy to do anything but lay there. I will be returning to work tomorrow. Wish me luck.

As soon as I find my barrings, I will write a real post. Thanks for being so understanding and great.

Mucisimas Gracias

The lovely ladies at BonBon Rose gave me this little lovely award. I want to now give the award to (drum roll everyone):
Shannon H
Kelsey H
Miriam N (private)

I apologize for my lack of blogging lately. This is a really busy time for my work. I will be able to breathe again and blog (hopefully, knock on wood) soon.

It started with apples

I have an apple tree in my backyard. This apple tree has produced a massive amount of apples. I started to feel bad because they were going to waste. I didn't want them to just rot; I decided to bottle some apple pie filling and apple butter. I went to the store and bought the mason jars. While there I decided that I could also do a batch of strawberry jam. (I mean come on, who doesn't love homemade strawberry jam on toast?) On my way to the produce section I saw that raspberries were on sale. I bought two flats and added raspberry jam to my rapidly growing list. Then on the drive home I saw a fruit stand and thought that I might as well add peaches too. I figured I was going to be in the middle of canning hell anyway, why not add something else.

After 3 trips to the store, 25 lbs of sugar, 8 hours on my feet, ridiculously sore hands from peeling apple, I was done. The finished product was 16 quarts of apple pie filling, 10 quarts of peaches, 18 half pints of raspberry jam, 20 half pints of strawberry jam, 18 half pints of apple butter and 5 half pints of pepper jelly. Yeah, somewhere along the way I added pepper jelly.


You would think that I would be sick of canning, but I am not. Next week on the agenda is tomatoes and salsa plus a few other things. Green beans, chili, pumpkin pie filling, and maybe some potatoes. I am working on getting my food storage ready. I figured this is a good start.

Hope you all had a great weekend. I will also be posting my thoughts on General Conference a little later.