Winter Work

The weather in the inland northwest continues to keep us on our toes.  Earlier this week, the view from our front door showed that most of our snow had melted and warmer (albeit rainy) weather had arrived.  PSYCHE!
 


Just two days later, my folks had the kids bundled up against the elements to create a snowman!

I also seemed to have confused the seasons when I hauled out and unpacked all of my canning equipment.  I have to admit that canning in the winter just seems unnatural, but I had several bags of old produce in the freezer that needed to be used and we had been given more squash, pomegranates and apples than we could possibly eat.  It took several days/evenings of work to use up all of our goods, but we'll definitely enjoy the end result of pomegranate syrup, spiced apples, applesauce, homemade ketchup, rhubarb chutney, mango chutney, red currant jam, orange marmalade and butternut squash soup.  YUM!

Thankfully, we've had other, less tedious (and much cuter) things to distract us from the winter doldrums!  Lucas and Cody stopped by for a wonderful visit last week, and we couldn't have been happier.