Dried Apples

This is what we've been doing all week. We tried getting some apples at the church orchard, but I couldn't believe the masses of people there. If you weren't there 10 minutes before opening, you didn't get any. My wonderful in-laws instead went out of their way and brought us almost 2 bushels from another orchard. Last year we happened upon a dehydrator and some cheap apples that we would never be able to eat all of, so we decided to try out drying apples. I was amazed that the children who would not eat fresh apples devoured the dry ones (loaded with cinnamon sugar of course)and they were gone way too fast. This year we got more apples and we spent 5 days peeling, coring, and slicing apples. This included 2 dehydrators running at the same time. Hopefully these will last us throughout the year. We also had a lot of friends over to babysit and are glad to help out where needed.

I woke up one night this week about 4 weeks prior to my due date convinced I would go into labor and couldn't sleep because I started thinking about all the things I needed to finish. About half of these are just things I want to finish, but the next day I got a move on and now the kids are packed, I'm halfway packed, the apples are done and my Disney World scrapbook is finished (mostly - I still have finishing touches). I'm almost to the point now where I can go into labor without feeling too unprepared. We still need to bring some things down from the attic and I wouldn't mind having a clean organized house, but that might be a lost cause anyway. On a good note, after over a month of the pain in my leg that I thought wouldn't go away until after delivery, somehow it dissappeared and I'm walking fairly normal again. Don't ask me how it happened because I didn't change anything, but I'm glad to not have to deal with that through this last month which is usually trying enough. Thanks to those who were concerned for me.