boys, boys, boys...

Well, since no one else is posting anything..., I guess I will. If you haven't heard, first of all, Isaac and Mary are expecting a little kiddo in January. They found out on Sept. 2nd that they are adding to the football team. That's right they are having a boy!! We are so excited for them, but wish that little Livy could have had another little cheerleader to cheer with. :D Maybe Livy will just have to join the team I guess. Congrats you two, and we love you!!

It was a LABOR day

Happy LABOR day! I remember when I first met Ryan that whenever there was a holiday I would ask him what he was doing to celebrate and his answer was usually"working, it's just another day." I thought how boring is that because our family always celebrated in some way and had a picnic or went camping or had fun with our cousins down at the camp ground. Well today we celebrated the holiday like Ryan did when he was growing up and we worked! It actually started raining last night and we are so glad to see the rain because it has been so dry. I love it when it rains, thunders, and lightnings especially when I am inside and am in my bed reading. This morning it was still raining so I decided to clean the house and Ryan went up and fed the animals and came down and said we should do apricots and plums today. Now when he says that he usually means lets dry them on the food dehydrator but today he wanted to do jam and his idea for the plums was to pit them and put them through the Victorio strainer so that we could make plum jam. I thought the apricot jam sounded okay but doing the plum jam that way sounded like a little too much work even to do on a Labor day. So I went over to Preston to see if I could find a new steamer, juicer because the one I had has pretty much seen it's last days. So I went to Alco and then to Stokes and there was nothing, so I went over to the Preston's own Bob's Mart. Well because it was labor day it was closed but I noticed that King's was open. I had gone down almost every aisle when I found the place where the stock pots were and what to my wondering eyes should appear but a real steamer juicer. When I looked at the price I thought, "wow, the price has really gone up on these canning gadgets." It was priced at $89.99.. I pretty much had two choices, to buy it or to not buy it and go home and pit all of those plums. So I thought," well it is time to get a new one." When the cashier was ringing it up I mentioned that these steamer juicer things had really gone up in price and she then asked, When did you buy your last one?" Me: Umm lets see that would be about 30 years ago... wow do I ever feel old. The cashier just smiled and said,"Yes they probably have gone up in price."

I took my prized possession home and started making the apricot jam and then when Ryan came in with the bucketful of plums I opened the box and was pleasantly surprised to see how nice it was. After doing one batch of plums we found out that it made 5 1/2 quarts of juice and it was a beautiful pink color. Mel, it doesn't look like prune juice. I even felt older after talking to Mel and she mentioned that we were making our own prune juice. It tastes pretty good and now that Ryan saw how fast we made 5 1/2 quarts of juice he is up picking more plums.

The apricot jam was very good and I used my Grandma Shaw's recipe here it is if anyone else would like to make some:

Grandma Shaw's Apricot Jam

12 cups of ground apricots (I just pulsed them in the food processor until they were the consistency that I wanted.)

11 1/2 cups of sugar

2 oranges (quarter them and take out the seeds and cut off the stem on the end then put them in the food processor and chop them until they are very fine, leave the peelings on it makes the jam taste like apricot marmalade.)

2 lemons ( do the same thing you did to the oranges.)

3- 20 ounce cans of crushed pineapple

Mix it all up in a very large bowl because it won't fit in one large pan, and then divide it into 2 large pans. cook it on medium high and then when it starts boiling turn it down a little and stir it until it gets thick and then put the jam in pint jars and process them for about 10 - 15 minutes. It is delicious and just how I remembered it.


This is the new steamer, juicer. It works great!
These apricots are almost ready and if you would like to come and get some just let me know.

This is the little red hen or I guess rooster who planted the tree, watered the tree, picked the fruit, washed the fruit, put the fruit into the juicer, filled the bottles with the juice, sealed the bottles and will then drink the juice, I am sure he will share if you ask him.

It was a good LABOR day.

A trip down memory lane

I have been using my scanner to the best of its abilites this last week so I have been having lots of memories about all of my little kids who now have little kids of their own. This first picture is of Nate holding Mel in our house in Provo. This is Rainee watching over her baby sister Mel.

This is a little later sorry these pictures are not in order but this is Isaac and Mac when we went on our trip to Washington.
This is in the living room at our house in Taylor. Jamie, Rainee and Mel are on the back row and Shaylee, Nate and Kerry are on the front row.
This is Mel in the snow and I can't remember ever seeing this picture.

Remember "Wally" this is a picture of Mac and Caitlin just "chillin" with the dog.
Mac showing his tonsils and Caitlin and Isaac hiding in the background.
Here is Dad with hair!
Mac and Isaac on one of their many hunting trips.
Mac, Mel, and Isaac showing off the fish we caught on one of our camping trips.

This is Grandpa Shaw with Tydon, no it really is Nate but it sure looks a lot like Tydon.
Mac showing his jumping abilities.
Nate with a fish.
Here is a little more normal picture but they are still making strange faces.

Rainee on her first day of school, I think Grandma Shaw has a picture like this when she was going to school too.
Rainee with puppies in the back of our station wagon.
This is Rainee, Mel, Emilee and Nate in front of Grandma Shaw's which is now Carolyn and Kevin's house.
Rainee and Nate dressing up as their favorite characters. I think I have seen some spider man costumes on some of the little boys. This was one that I made for halloween one year.
Mac with the big white tent on one of our camping trips.

Nate giving Mel a kiss.
This last week Mac was cleaning out the shed and their was the old filing cabinet that had been in their since we moved, you can tell how often I have needed it. He was going to throw out all the stuff that was in it but I told him to let me go through it first. Well their were some real treasures in there and some of them were old pictures and old negatives that I thought I should scan so they would be on my computer. Many of the pictures I have copies of or my children have copies of but some of them I could not remember or I may have lost the picture. These are some family pictures that we had taken minus Dad because he didn't get back from a hunting trip. I decided if I had all of the kids ready to go that I would just go anyway. Mel is just 10 days old in this picture and after waiting around for Dad we all got in the car and had our picture taken. These are some of the proofs that I saved because if I remember right we only purchased one 5x7 and I am not sure where that went. They scanned pretty well even though they were only about 2x2 in size.

This picture was after church in Provo. Mel is the baby and Rainee doesn't want to look at the camera.
This is a picture of Rainee that I can't remember ever seeing but I must have because it was in the file.


This one is of Dad with a little puppy that they had, Dad is 3 years old.

I sure am glad that I went through the file, I love looking at old pictures the saying that a picture is worth a thousand words is more than true because you now have a real visual image in your head and you can see the family resemblances in all of them.

Happy Birthday "Igick"!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!! We love you and hope you are having a very fun and special day! ;)How can you not love this crazy, silly kid!!?

24th Of July

I know that it has been a couple of weeks since the 24th but I am just getting around to getting these pictures posted so sorry about that. It was a busy few weeks and we sure had a bunch of fun with everyone here. Every year they have a 24th of July celebration at the Mapleton ward and they invited the Cubriver ward since we used to be part of them. It is just an old fashioned celebration and we did not invite PETA to this year's celebration so yes they still chase all of the animals and the kids who catch them, take them home with them. Layne was sad that he didn't catch any thing but Rainee and Doug were glad or I should say Grandma was glad because it probably would have ended up at our house. In the egg toss Doug and Layne went forever and I think the egg bounced about 10 times on the ground and it still didn't break, it eventually broke when Layne was trying to catch it, we should have called it super egg! We had a firework show on Saturday night and Nate was the fireworks expert and showed all of the boys how fireworks should not be handled. We all enjoyed it though, I think Nate enjoyed it the most, he was able to do what his Mom and Dad told him not to do when he was younger. We had a great time and thanks to all for being here!!

July 24th Celebration

Happy Birthday Layne!

Well we celebrated Layne's birthday finally. He had an army birthday party. I filled up 250 water balloons and they set up their 2 slip n slides. They also had snowcones, pizza, cake, and ice cream. They had lots of fun. But knowing me I only remembered to take a few pictures.

Mac and Jessica and the marathon

Here is Ma Jones with some of the girls in our family on the trek.

Here is "Pa Jones" and our family trekking across Rocky Ridge. This was the beginning of the marathon.

Mac and Jessica were married on July 22, 2008. It was a beautiful day and I have been busy ever since, sorry that I have not posted sooner but it has been a marathon and I think I am getting to the end. It started the week of the trek, Ryan and I were Ma and Pa on the trek to Martin's cove and Rocky Ridge which was July 14th through the 17th.

It is always amazing to me to experience a little of what the pioneers went through. We traveled 18 miles in one day and I had developed blisters the 2nd day so it was a bit of a challenge to walk 18 miles with blisters on my feet. But I have so much admiration for the amazing people that our ancestors are and the great sacrifices that they made so we could live in Zion. When we arrived home we were then on to the wedding plans. We had the quilt shower for Jessica and Chelsea on the 19th which was Saturday and we also had a baby shower for Kristi on that day so it was the day of the showers. Rainee drove from Reno on Friday and Melanie flew in on Saturday night. I went to the airport to get her and then drove back to Grandma and Grandpa Shaw's to stay overnight because Mark came home from his mission and his homecoming was on Sunday which by the way was a great day to hear the growth and testimony that he gained while on his mission to Mexico.

Aren't these pictures great! They are so photogenic and such a beautiful couple.

Well after the missionary homecoming we drove to Nate and Rachel's house to celebrate the July birthdays, Happy Birthday Bryce, Jaedon, Layne and Nate!!

We then went home and we all had fun with all of the little boys and of course Olivia, she is a little outnumbered. On Monday we had the wedding social at Jessica's home and it was so nice to see so many people and I really liked being able to visit with everyone. It was very casual and we just had a celebration of their lives. On Tuesday we drove to Salt Lake to the temple and were able to enjoy their beautiful sealing. It was so nice and their were many loved ones their to share it with, I felt a special spirit their and learned some things that I had not known before. After we took pictures, it had been raining but stopped for the pictures, by now the little ones were getting pretty restless and we had Shawnee and Cierra take them to the hotel while we enjoyed the nice dinner at PF Chang's. The food was delicious and it was a beautiful relaxed day. We stayed in Salt Lake that night and then went to ParkCity the next day. We had fun with all of the little boys and they all survived our shopping at the outlets. We drove home on the 24th and enjoyed having Doug come. Oh, I forgot, the Sunday before we left on the Trek Ryan was called to be Bishop so he was a little preoccupied for the last 2 weeks. On Sunday he was sustained and it was great that our family was still able to be here for the condolences. So it has been a marathon and I am glad to kind of be back to normal, I enjoyed the last 2 weeks and loved being with my beautiful family!!

Our Trip to Park City

Jessica and Mac's wedding

The ring

Well it is official the ring is on her finger so she is engaged, even though all of the invitations are out and the wedding is pretty much planned. It took a while for her to get her ring because it was especially made for Jessica. I think the wait was worth it though because it is a very beautiful ring.

The three stones across the middle are set in a rose gold so it makes the diamond look pink. It is really a beautiful ring!

Mac and Jessica are official