Just A Teensy Error In Judgment

You know, I thought that half a bushel of peaches sounded (and looked) like a lot when all I wanted to can was twelve 8-oz jars of jam, but I asked the expert and bought what she told me to buy.  Ha.  Joke's on me...next time I double-check!

I canned my 12 (actually 15) jars of jam.  The smaller ones hold eight ounces and the larger one twelve.

Then, since I had a TON of my peach puree (fresh peaches, sliced, cooked and run through the food mill to remove the skins) left over, I said to myself, "Hey, I have some freezer jars and the right kind of pectin, too.  I can make some freezer jam."  Well, I did.  Three batches' worth.  The ones with purple caps hold eight ounces and the green caps, sixteen ounces.

And you better bet that I still had some puree left over!  I froze it as is to use later, if inspiration strikes.  (Any suggestions?)  Wow.  That was an all-day endeavor, albeit unintentionally.  And the dishes involved...ye gods and little chickens.  Every big pot and bowl in the kitchen and half the utensils!

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In other news, I had an awesome day with Thing One yesterday.  There are always official geocaching challenges in the month of August, and we both really wanted to complete this year's (last year the challenge was to find at least one cache every day of August and that just wasn't happening.)  This year's challenge is more manageable: without dorking out on you too much, you have to find one each of five different categories of caches and also attend a meetup event during August to collect your six virtual 'badges,' which together earn you the seventh and final badge.  We had the first five going into yesterday and just needed a meetup to complete the challenge, so we headed about 60 miles north to a gorgeous state park in an area we've never visited, found 23 caches, met a bunch of nice people and got our badges.  This is the 7th one (screen grab from my phone.)

We left the house about 11:30AM and rolled back in about 9PM in a state of pretty much total exhaustion!  Thing One was asleep within about five minutes of his butt hitting the seat in the car.  Although any day spent caching would be a good one for me regardless, the best part of it was having that extensive uninterrupted time with my son, which rarely happens.  Kid is 11 now...pretty soon he isn't going to want to spend all day with Mom anymore, so I'll enjoy it while I've got it.

Pic from yesterday.  One of our favorites from last year's meetup event had him posed Titanic-style looking over a valley from a mountain overlook, so we decided that it had to become an annual tradition even though this year's park was sadly lacking in mountains.  :)

   

The kids' school bus info arrived while we were out yesterday (pickup and drop off times, etc.)  Fall's a-comin'...only a couple of weeks of summer left!