End of summer events!

 It seems like we are at the time of the year when it is finally starting to cool down and the end of summer activities are some of my favorite of the year.  First of all we went to Bridger over labor day weekend (our annual tradition) and it was great.  A little rainy but really it is so nice to leave everything behind and just enjoy being with family and the outdoors.  And Julian LOVE'S it.  So here is a picture log of our time in Wyoming.  Above are the pics of Julian doing his absolute favorite activity which is playing in dirt.  If you can't tell he is throwing it all over himself:)  My favorite part is the huge smile on his face!

Here are some pics below of the fun tents and tps at Bridger as well as hanging out around them.  I love how cute Aaron and Julian look in their Bridger clothes.

And Aaron's parent came and visited this year which was soooo awesome!

Here we are cozy in our tent on a rainy night (it is amazing what your hair does after so many days of camping;)

Here is little future missionary Julian posing with our travel Book of Mormon.

Julian also enjoyed exploring the historic building and museums, and plowing fields...? I guess that is historic too.

And throwing rocks and playing at the creek.

And hanging out with daddy while he watched the Indians dance;)

He also spent a lot of time trying to ride the ropes on our tents and anything else he could:).

Here is a pic of our camps:

 

 Last but not least I love the food we get to eat.  Above is a pic of a pineapple upside down cake that was so yummy.  The sugar went to the top and caramelized so it was all covered in brown sugar goodness.  Anyway I love dutch oven and I love to eat yummy camping food.  All in all we had a terrific time at Bridger and loved the time that we got to spend together as a family.  Yay for camping!!!

So when we got back we started the big process of cleaning up all of our stuff and doing a million loads of laundry but soon after we got home my wonderful mother in law came by and dropped off two boxes full of tomatoes!  So after a bit of cleaning we started to do some serious canning.  And then later we went to a family get together to hang out with my aunt and uncle before they went back to Texas and picked like 20 pounds or more off apples of my other aunt's apple tree.  So then we started canning apples like crazy. We decided to make apple sauce and pie apples because that is what we eat!
 Sometime I have to be careful to can the kind of food we actually eat on a regular basis. Here are the apples simmering for applesauce after they have been peeled and cored.

 

Here is the applesauce coming to a boil after I blended everything up with my immersion blender.

And voila! Cans of apple sauce for the big guy and here are some of canned tomatoes.

 

 

   We had a bunch more cans of tomatoes already from the day before and we still have more to do! But instead of finishing up canning on Saturday we decided to paint our garage and front door instead!  This is what the garage door looked like after we washed it with soap and water to get all the dirt and grease off:

and this is what the front door looked like:

 

So we painted all the indented parts around the panels with a regular paint brush first and then went over the whole thing with a roller.  We just used latex exterior paint in a color called alabaster. We wanted it to sort of be a warmer white to go with the brown brick but have been dying to lighten up the whole exterior look of the house (and to help it look a little more updated).

And Presto! We really like how it turned out but now we are trying to figure out what color to do the siding or if we should just leave it...

 

Last but not least we also updated a few windows in the top floor bedrooms to the nice new ones:) The left is the after and on the right is what the rest of the windows still look like.

I love the new windows and I can't wait till we can change all of them. This is what it looks like on the inside: 

 

Okay so next time I promise it will be a shorter post:)