One More Hour To Go...

First, let's get this morning's harvest out of the way:

Now, on to more fun stuff!

I had a few minutes, so here are some pics taken today. With Hurricane Bill churning up the surf for us, I took the kids out for a hike through the refuge out to the beach, in hopes of tiring them out! See, Daddy comes home tonight and the kids have been driving me crazy for the past 2 days asking every hour when are we picking him up! Tiring them out didn't work, but at least we were able to pass the morning hours quickly. We made it home just in time since the rest of the afternoon brought torrential downpours, severe lightning, and street flooding. It was hot this morning, and the kids managed to hike about 1 1/2 miles total. My kids are either awesome hikers or I am a terrible mother, lol! We brought plenty of water and a picnic lunch (all carried by me, I might add!) and saw plenty of wildlife along the hike to make it interesting. Although the beaches are all closed to swimmers now due to Bill churning the waters from afar, the surfers are out in full strength and we are looking forward to some good surf fishing tomorrow if it's not pouring. Daddy's car is already packed and ready, so I am sure for the next few days I will not be posting unless something earth-shattering-gotta-tell-everyone happens! We are looking forward to spending some time having fun before he leaves AGAIN in September, lol!

Gotta run now, kids are bouncing off the walls and Daddy's flight lands in 45 minutes, yay! A month is a long time to wait when you have kids, lol!

What's better than two Australian Shepherds?

Answer: Two Aussies greeting their Daddy after a 14 month deployment!

I thought that video was good preparation for what the next year holds in store for our family! Deployment is right around the corner now, and I plan on writing some posts about the "Big D" and how our family copes and dealing with the special challenges that come with the territory. I have been in denial all summer. Although he has been gone most of it, we have been getting to 'borrow' him every few weeks! Well, it won't be long now until the real deal, and I need to start preparing. I have been through many deployments, but every one is different. This time around will be the first time the kids will be old enough to be affected greatly by it. Compound that with missing Thanksgiving, Christmas, both the boys' birthdays, and the entire school year - you can see I will have my hands full! So occasionally, you will read posts that are related to the deployment haphazardly intertwined with gardening! What a strange mixture, but that is my life! With the garden doing a 'whole lot of nothing' in winter (how many posts can I really do about shallots & garlic, lol?), I am hoping that blogging will allow me to keep some sanity and that you will continue to follow along with my Military Wife Adventures! We are a strange breed indeed - if I stray into Militarese, just holler at me to speak English please and I will clarify! My house is filled with acronyms and strange words for common objects and during the pre-deployment and deployment phase it only gets worse! I hope you have fun and shed a few tears with me, your continued kind words and encouragement are always appreciated. Although a good cyberspace kick in the butt is called for sometimes too if I get too whiny!

Here we go...!

Well, the time has finally come...tomato sauce season! Tonight is my first large batch. About 30 Heirlooms went into this one, a combination of Brandywine, True Black Brandywine, and a few Black Krims and some of our garlic, shallots, peppers, and basil. I threw the rest of the bottle of red wine that I opened last night in too. It's different every time, lol...whatever I have laying on the counter is going in there! I forgot how good this stuff smells. We left for an hour and came back and I could smell the crock pot simmering from 15 feet outside the front door!

Here are two of the Brandywines picked this morning. The shapes are always amusing, but these two weighed in at 1.1 lb and 1.26 lbs each!

That's all I got today, folks! Gotta go and get messy with sauce!