House O' Sullivans

I took the kids to the Utah State Fair earlier this month.  It was opening day and since it was a Thursday morning (most kids were in school and most adults were working), the masses hadn't yet arrived, which made it so much more enjoyable.  My kids all got in free and it only cost ME 5 bucks.  What a deal!  Karen, my sister-in-law, was taking her daughter (Maya), and her dad (Marcial) and invited us to come along.  I convinced my mom to come (that was easy since she is up for ANYTHING) and we had a fabulous time gallivanting around the fairgrounds.  Perusing the cows, pigs, sheep, goats, bunnies, birds, and horses is usually the main event for us.  This year we went to the "Utah's Own" tasting tent and enjoyed an all-you-can-eat, Costco-on-steroids sampling of lots of yummy locally made foods that equated to a free lunch.  My mom and I also found a perfectly ripe nectarine tree near the horse stables that we raided.  So ...

This morning CBS and I dropped the kids off at Kristen's house and then headed for the hills. Casey wanted to hike to the fabled upper reservoir in the Bell's Canyon Cirque.  Although the first part of the hike (to the lower reservoir and up to the first waterfalls) is fairly mellow, it morphs into a relentless STEEP, bouldery, poorly maintained trail.  Did I mention that it was STEEP and BOULDERY?  Well it was.  After about five miles of extreme uphill, I sat down to let the sweat evaporate and bask in wilderness beauty while Casey did a bit more searching for the upper reservoir (to no avail).  We did locate an amazing campsite surrounded by clear, spring fed streams that we want to haul our kids to next year, but never made it to the upper reservoir.  We must be getting old, but we DID have fun AND it was a gorgeous day in the Wasatch. CBS posing near the first major waterfalls  ...

Proof that Casey's obsessions are rubbing off on our kids: Like father, like son. I love that Hal is wearing swimming goggles as eye protection.  (She set herself up with those, naturally.)

Friday we finally canned the pears that have been waiting in the queue for a week and a half.  We have some friends in the ward that inherited a veritable pear orchard and they generously let us pick what we want.  I went over with my friend Cody and all of our kids (on my birthday--a fitting celebration indeed) and we picked several buckets.  I spread the pears out on the basement kitchen counters to ripen after we picked them, and the kids have been foraging openly and regularly on the harvest ever since.  They'd consumed so many, I was thinking that I might need to go pick some more, but we cranked out plenty of pear sauce with the remains of the first picking. Since I bottled a huge load of tomatoes last week, I was running low on canning jars.  My Mom came to the rescue by rooting out two big boxes of mason jars from Grandma Olsen's garage for me.  Grandma Olsen was a canning queen, and I was feeling good about cycling her bottles ...