Pomegranates, Galore!

My dad likes pomegranates. He loves them, in fact. He grows them, too. He grows at least 13 varieties of pomegranates. And once they’re ripe, something must be done with them!

Marcus and my dad picked a lot of the pomegranates off the trees this year. I decided I wanted to make pomegranate jelly. So the peeling began! Thankfully, we had lots of helpers.

Over the course of a few days, we spent hours at the sink - picking the arils out of the pomegranates. We had our system down. - And we took care of bucket after bucket of pomegranates!

Each five-gallon bucket of pomegranates gave us a large strainer and a small strainer of arils.

Then we juiced the pomegranates. Thankfully, Dad has a juicer. Keeping the arils coming in, the juice coming out, and dumping the juice into a bigger container was a two-person job. Look at all that trash from the juicer!

Did you know that freshly juiced pomegranate juice is frothy? It is!

And Dad drank the froth!

We had so many containers of juice. We used just a few of them to make some jelly. (Thank you, Pippin, for coming over to share your expertise and for helping us in the jelly-making process!)

Finally, our pomegranate jelly was made! And I heard a few of the cans seal! That was exciting!

 Doesn’t it look great?!! I had a peanut butter and pomegranate jelly sandwich just today for lunch! Delicious!

Note: I also now fully understand why pomegranate jelly costs so much! It is quite a process to get the arils out and ready for juicing!

Halloween Play Time

Grandmom has some dress-up clothes, so Claire, Dayton, and I tried them on one day. :-)

Boo!

Coldplay

Jordan is a concert-goer. Jordan’s entire family loves to go to concerts. And do they ever go! They’ve been to so, so many concerts. I’ve always happily passed (or not even been invited because they know I won’t want to go). But Coldplay was different. I like Coldplay. So I decided to go. We went with Stephen and Mel.

We went to The Melting Pot first. Thanks to some construction, ridiculous road blocks, and the Rangers playing the same night, there was crazy traffic. For a while we thought we weren’t going to make it before they started playing. So Stephen, Mel, and I got out of the car and left Jordan to find a parking space. Thankfully, we were able to check with a parking guy close by, and he had a spot for us! So Jordan was able to turn around in a weird place and make it to this parking space. (We paid a pretty price for it, but at least we were parked!) - And we had plenty of time before Coldplay started playing.

We had cool light-up bracelets that were timed with the music.

It was a spectacular show!

I think I hit the jackpot of concerts to attend. I don’t know that I need to go to another concert like this because, according to Jordan, this may have been the best one. I had a great time!

More College Station Time

Claire likes babies, right? Here she is with a big little guy!

 We celebrated McKinley’s birthday.

Happy birthday!

Dayton got a little silly.

And then he and I got a little silly together! :-)

Finally, Grandpa made some popcorn with his awesome popcorn machine!

Swimming, College Station Style

We visited College Station while Aunt Rebecca, Uncle Chris, Jameson, Aunt Liz, Uncle Jon, and McKinley were in town. So, with Grandma and Grandpa, and Aunt Mel, Uncle Stephen, Kyle, Ryan, and Evan, we were all there. We spent some fun time in the pool.


Uncle Bando threw the kids up in the air.

We took some cousin pictures.

Evan was up from his nap for these. (Jameson was still napping).

Little Dayt!

I love the progression of these next five pictures.

Hi Uncle Jon!