Busy Times

Hello Everyone,

I am sorry that I have not been on for such a long time. My family has been really busy the last couple of weeks. We have canned and canned and canned. Its has been fun though. A couple of Saturdays ago my mom, sister-in-law, and I were cutting up what we thought were banana peppers and putting them in bags and freezing them. Boy was that a nightmare! The juice from the peppers started making our hands burn a little but we didn't think anything of it and just rinsed our hands off and kept right on workin'.  Well, that was a mistake!!  When we were done we washed our hands thinking that it would just go away. It did, temporarily. After about five minutes of wondering what was wrong, my sister-in-law got on the computer and tried to find out how to relieve it. Someone said try mixing baking soda and water and putting it on like you would do for bee stings.  Well, we tried that but it didn't help. When the burning started spreading and getting worse we got pretty desperate and tried everything you could imagine.....rubbing tomatoes on them, flour, sea breeze face wash, mouth wash, bleach, and a ton of other things that DID NOT work.  We finally read a site that said it will go away at about seven or eight hours after it happened.  Well, we finished the peppers at around  12:30 in the afternoon and by 8:30pm it was still there. So we ended up just soaking our hands in ice water. None of us could stand any heat whatsoever. Going outside or even holding a person's hand would set it off real bad and make it alot worse.  By 3:30 in the morning it had gone away. Thank the LORD!  Needless to say, we are most certainly going to remember gloves next time!!!!    
Just a couple days ago we canned 35 quarts of corn, 21 quarts of tomatoes and around seven more quarts of pickles. Then our pastor said that if we dug up his potatoes we could have half of them! What a blessing.  So far we have 95 quarts of potatoes and we still have two and a half five gallon buckets left!! I know... it's a lot.

On Saturday we helped my oldest brother and his wife move. He starts his new job on Wednesday so please pray that it goes well. I don't know why I did not post this sooner but I just didn't think to. Several months ago they told us they were going to have a baby!!!!  Then just a couple of weeks ago we found out it's a boy!!!! Of course we were all really excited. He's due in December.  I can't hardly wait. But I know I am going to have to. Babies are just so sweet.

I just made myself a dress for the mini-concert our family sang at last night.  It was a mother/daughter smoothie party event. That was fun. I always enjoy singing with my family. Well I need to stop for tonight.  I hope ya'll have a wonderful week. Be back soon.

                                                   Your Friend, Ashley R.