Apple Pie Filling . . . w/ monkeys

 More apples and more canning. This time apple pie filling. 

an added step, you need a monkey and a tractor to move tables and anything else heavy around (don't forget the monkey, seriously she's darling and will entertain you with her monkey sounds while you work).

Time to gather up the monkeys and pick apples. Although not as many as you may think, we still have two buckets of apples in our garage, but really how can you stop? There's so many apples on the tree, if you sneeze a bucket full will fall off for you (caution: wash all sneezed on apples. . . okay fine wash all apples).

 tongue wagging is optional, but highly suggested. 

 when 2 apple peelers go to work this process speeds by.

 Don't forget your monkey supervisor, you know you need some monkey telling you how this all works.

Sometimes you may need to help the monkey with the apple peeler, especially if she is wearing mittens. That's a skilled monkey right there! 

 You may not be able to tell these are monkeys, but that's only because they are in disguise. And when there's not enough seats to go around, every monkey's gotta share.

 Except that big monkey, don't sit with him, he's watching the pressure cookers and I don't want my garage blowing up. ;)

So I forgot to actually get pictures of the done bottles (ya know busy working and all), but we did 41 bottles. 21 for us and 20 for Jerry and Natalie. As per usual 2 of our bottles didn't seal and we were forced to make some scrumptious apple crisp. Yummy. 

And because I didn't feel like making a separate post for these allow me to show you the school work. With Jaden and Bella both is school we go through our line a lot faster, but I promise it's all good stuff. Up here you may notice Bella's butterfly and water color pictures. And Jaden's spelling test as well, he got a 100%!

 Bella's bunny, bugs in a jar, and ant. Jaden's dino with sparkle spots and head dress that he had to read the colors and color them the right color. 

These kids have skills I tell you. They are loving school and having a blast!

1 year old!!

Next birthday up is of course Olivia's. Her birthday was onon Tuesday, but since Daddy was out of town we decided to celebrate Friday when he got home. 

Bella and I made these pretty cupcakes for her.

 I decorated the wall with her monthly Billy pictures. It shows how she's grown over the year.

 Presents!

 Last year Bella got a little kitty that meows for her birthday. Olivia loves it and even says "kitty" But she could only play with it when Bella wasn't around so last minute I had the thought to get Olivia her own. She loves it very much. It's so cute to watch her play with it.

Olivia was for more interested in playing with the toys than unwrapping them.

We realized with all our toys we didn't have any pull toys for Olivia to pull around so we got her this pull caterpillar 

 We weren't the only one's with that idea. Grandma and Grandpa Potter got her a pull frog and Grandma and Grandpa Yancey got her this pull puppy. LOL! Worked out just fine, now all the kids can pull toys at the same time. :)

Here's the birthday clan!

Cake Time!

Oh yeah, she knows how this works

More cake please!

Happy Birthday baby girl. I love your personality that shows brightly every day. I love how you smile at everyone you know and how you toddle around with so much curiosity for this world. Olivia, you are a joy to have in our lives. 

Olivia VS Cake

It's on cake!!

she starts out quite dainty. Even holding onto the stand (probably to make sure I don't change my mind and take it away).

 She thought there was something special about those purple dots. She plucked pretty much all of them from that side of the cake.

purple fingers in mouth. Mmmm

 Digging a little deeper into the goodness that is chocolate cake.

 I can't stand the perfectness of it she is too darn cute for words.

 Overhead shot of the goodness. 

 Close up on the cake, also the first time she finally let go of the stand. She must be getting full. . .ish

 Do you think we're having fun? Oh yes we are!!

 Nothing dainty about that.

 And she's up. Quick snap of the camera and a mad dash to catch her before she spreads cake everywhere. 

 Cake AND a bath? This girl is in heaven.

Happy birthday sweet sweet girl. Extra sweet now, Mmmm you smell like chocolate. 

Party like you're a 6 year old!

And party time! This year I told Jaden he could have a birthday party with his friends. He has so many friends in the neighborhood and was excited to have them all come. 

A little decorating while the kids were at school 

After Jaden had a chance to show off some of his family presents we moved onto the games. This game each person has 2 bowls and 9 sour patch kids. I buried them in whipped cream and they had to move them from one bowl to the other without hands. We did 4 at a time then let the other 4 have a turn because seriously watching this stuff is as fun as doing. So silly.

Olivia got in on the action too.

Yummy!

Presents!!

So all the kids started back a bit to give Jaden room,

then got closer

and closer

and really really close!! It was just too exciting not to.

Time to play with the new presents!

"All the kids are playing with the cars? I'll take this then."

Cup cake time. Yeah I don't know what the kid is doing with his arms there.

Oh yes, there is a cookie INSIDE the cupcake. I'm pretty much awesome.

Oh yeah bring on more cake. 

Pinata time! No pictures from this unfortunately. We ended up doing this in the garage because it was CRAZY windy outside. Every kid got a couple whacks at it, then we let Ahna at it and down it came. Candy and cars everywhere. Yes I put toy cars in the pinata. That's right, because I'm awesome. :)

We ended up with a total of 13 kiddos in our house including my own. Wow! Jaden had a great time and got even more cars and other cool stuff. Happy Birthday big 6 year old and thanks to all his friends for helping make it awesome!