Where the White Things Are: Just peachy

The only post titles I seem to be able to think of lately are fruit related. The blackberries slowed down this week, but they are still steadily producing. It's currently more like a river flow of blackberries rather than a fire hydrant spray, so about a half gallon of berries every few days rather than a gallon every day. The blackberry flood was replaced by a peach avalanche this week! The handful of crumpled, crispy, crippled-looking peach trees out front are overflowing with small sweet juicy peaches! The peaches were so small, I wasn't sure if they would taste good, and when I went to check on them, they were pretty rock hard. But we waited too long on the apricots and completely missed their window of ripeness, so I decided to pick some mini peach rocks and see what happened. Rose and I picked a big box of these blushing beauties on Monday, and to my surprise they were soft and ready to eat by Tuesday!

In the spirit of our fruity abundance, here are some peachy things that happened this week:

I ran five miles on Monday, after taking five days off of running to rest my sore ankle. It was so nice to run again, but at about mile four I started feeling some more ankle pain. The result was three trips to the chiropractor in one week, to get my ankle put back in place. I've had this issue before, so I know eventually it will stay, but for now I am basically going back and forth between the elliptical machine and the chiropractor. The fascia and tissue on one side of my ankle is super sore and painful from me running and hiking on my ankle so much while it was out of place. I am waiting for the tissue to heal while training my ankle to stay where it belongs. It's extra boring and discouraging because this is my favorite time of year to be on foot on the go!

Because I wasn't able to run much at all this week, after sweating it out on the elliptical machine, I hit the weights kind of hard on both Tuesday and Thursday, resulting in a very sore deep core and a slight improvement on my pull-up goal: I managed to pull myself up to nose level using the middle-sized orange band! For one pull-up. I can do five pull-ups with the thickest purple pull-up assist band, almost three with the next size down (red), and now almost one with the orange band! I still can't pull my body upwards more than a few centimeters while hanging from a pull-up bar with zero assisting band, but maybe by the time my ankle heals I'll be able to bend my elbows?

I made blackberry jam and blackberry peach freezer jam. Both are heavenly. Our freezer might burst if I make any more batches of freezer jam though. I may need to go back to making cooked jams sealed in shelf stable jars for the rest of the summer.

Also in the kitchen, I made two new recipes this week: iffy mushy tuna yam patties for dinner on Monday night, and rich chicken alfredo penne of my own invention on Tuesday night. Recipe redemption in my family always seems to come via creamy sauces. My family will always forgive and forget past weird concoctions if I ply them with a good cheesy roux. In spite of the 50% success rate, it felt nice to be in the mood to try a new recipe--I hardly ever branch out in the kitchen during the busy school year, because we need reliable filling large meals that can thrive in the crock pot. And I ended up eating the yam tuna patties for lunch all week, with avocado and fresh tomatoes on top. Still zero points for texture and mouth feel, but great flavor and very filling.

On Wednesday night, Jeff and I went on a date. We visited our favorite taco truck, El Pelon II. Since Sunnyside is low on romantic places to eat outside, we went home and ate tacos on a plastic folding table under the grape arbor in our yard. The grape arbor is on the north side of the barn, so it's not very visible from the house so we were able to hide from our kids and feel like we were still out on a date in our own yard. Thankfully it wasn't too terribly hot this week, which is the only thing that made our outdoor dinner date possible. Don't worry--we're under another triple digit heat advisory through Tuesday now, so summer is still summering.

On Thursday, Jeff and Jay joined the youth ages 16+ in our stake for a whitewater rafting trip in Oregon. They left home at 6am and didn't get back until 8pm. They had a good time. I keep thinking how awesome it is to live in Sunnyside, a veritable fruit bowl of a valley that's located within a 2 hour drive of gorgeous mountains as well as rushing rivers, for all the outdoors activities our hearts could desire.

On Friday, my sister Mel and her family came to visit us for the weekend! They live 3 hours away in Seattle, but somehow it had been an entire year since either of us visited the other! It felt so special and fun having them stay at our house. Cute 18 month old Dahlia ran all over the place talking our ears off, and Pancha the fluffy dog lived her best country life sprinting all over our big backyard. We stayed up too late talking and made a heavenly butterscotch peach pie. We got tacos twice from the two best taco trucks in town, Mel and Braxton made us delicious gimbap for lunch on Sunday, and we sent them home with about 30 pounds of peaches. It was a fun-filled weekend and I love my sister and brother in law and niece so much! And their soft sweet dog.

Peaches!

Peaches and blackberries galore.

I enjoy redirecting Amber's restless energy to my feet. When she gets squirmy during family scripture, I make her give me a foot rub.

Mushy yam tuna patties! My mother in law Leslie gave us a big bag of home grown Roma tomatoes from her garden, so I enjoyed fresh tomatoes all week.

Another day, another elliptical sweat sesh in the barn.

Jeff cleared out two rooms in the barn and employed the floor scrubber to deep clean the barn this week. It looked so good for a few hours until we had another cross country practice! Then the dusty footprints returned.

Jeff rearranged the cardio room for fun.

In order to get out of her daily 30 minutes of yardwork one day this week, Rose opted to do extra indoor chores. She deep cleaned the main basement area, including hand scrubbing all of the many paint splatters from Amber's past art projects. I think I'm going to cancel all future solo painting activities forever and keep the paint under lock and key.

Taco date! I ordered in Spanish like it was no big deal and felt kind of proud, even though it was very basic.

Tacos surrounded by grapes.

In a few years, the grapes will cover the top of the arbor and we will have some natural leafy green shade.

This note from Amber made me laugh. She unloaded the dishwasher and had no clue where my citrus juicer went.

I discovered that one of the so-called tomato seedlings that I bought from the hardware store two months ago was actually a pepper plant of some sort.

One cherry tomato is turning red! Bring on the tomatoes, my little neglected garden!

My big boy tomatoes are going to be amazing if they ever turn red.

The rafting company provided pictures of each raft navigating key points along the river. I loved being able to see them in action! Jay is on the front right, and Jeff is on the right at the back.

Heading for the big rapid--I think I would hate white water rafting, haha.

I love the grin on Jay's face here.

Amber saved her mowing money and bought a Pokemon plushie this week. She was very happy about it.

I took out some of my not-able-to-run aggression on our side flowerbed. This flowerbed has been my nemesis for the past two years. I started hacking the weeds with a hoe, but switched to the hedge trimmers because the weeds were so tall and thick. I found two pretty little wildflowers buried in the melee, and stuck them in my overall pocket.

Carnage. This is going to take a while.

My cute little wildflowers. Out of all of those seeds I planted, this was about the best that grew. Next year I'll change tactics. I will grow flowers someday!