Apples, Apples Everywhere!!!!

After my parent's wreck the only thing that mom was really worried about was the fact that she had all of these apples that she was planning to do things with that were going to go bad before she felt like dealing with them. You see, they have apple trees on their property and for whatever reason they had TONS of apples this year. Given the dry summer we had, none of us thought that there would be any apples but we were wrong.

I wanted to do what I could to help mom after the accident so I offered to take all of the apples to my house and take care of them by making, and then freezing and/or giving items away. Well that was over two weeks ago and there are STILL apples all over my house!

As of right now I have made 12 apple pies... totally from scratch... including the crust.
Here is a picture of one of them:

I have also cooked and frozen a good many apples to go with meals throughout the year. I enjoy the apples and I LOVE apple pies... and I am happy to be able to do something to help but I think these things are multiplying in my refrigerator. Is that possible? :-) They are still filling my fridge and I feel like I am never going to get them all cooked.

Hopefully I will get to all of them before they ruin. Anyone know any good apple recipes? :-)

Two Weeks Ago

Two weeks ago tonight something pretty terrible but pretty miraculous happened. I was in my hometown for work and started to head back to the town where I live following church that Wednesday night. When I was about 10 miles out of town I got one of the worst phone calls you can get. It was my dad telling me that he and my mom had had a bad accident and that I needed to come back. Fortunately I could hear them both talking so I knew they were relatively okay.

I drove as safely and quickly as I could about 20 minutes back to where they were and came upon this:


That used to be a 2000 Honda Accord. There wasn't much left of it after they hit a pickup truck that my dad never saw. They were driving home on the interstate and ran up on the back of a pickup truck. We have yet to piece together all of the story but the truck was apparently traveling very slowly with either no tail lights or at best black out tail lights that looked like this:

Here is a better picture of the truck that they hit and another picture of their car (these pictures were taken the next day at the junk yard):

Anyways, back to that night... my parents were both taken via ambulance to the hospital and we spent the next five hours or so in the ER. Dad was released with only bumps and soreness but mom was kept for the next few days. She had a broken sternum (breast bone) and two broken ribs. She also has a herniated disc in her neck... but it doesn't hurt and they aren't even sure whether or not it might have been there prior to the accident.

The whole incident was terrible and scary but my parents were so lucky. All of their injuries were from their seat belts and the airbags. That in and of itself was a miracle. While they are still sore and mom won't be completely healed for at least three months, it could have been SOOO much worse.

Fortunately I was able to drop everything and stay in town for the next few days to try and help take care of things. I've been playing a bit of catch up ever since and I haven't had much time to blog but I feel very lucky to still have my parents here.

Just wanted to share with all of my "blog friends" and let you know why I had been MIA. I am still getting caught up and getting ready for a little vacation next week but hopefully I will be able to check in a little more.

Time Travel Tuesday: First Job Experience

It's technically Wednesday here but it is still Tuesday in some parts of the country and the world, so I am going to go ahead and participate in Time Travel Tuesday.

My first "real" job experience was the summer between my junior and senior year of high school. I was a file clerk at a local construction company and while I worked with very nice people I was bored out of my mind most of the time and there isn't much to tell about that job.

But I'm not going to talk about that job experience. I want to talk about the job experience that I had the summer after my 7th grade year. I guess that would have made me 13 years old. A family from church that had moved to town about a year and a half before had a little girl named L. who was about two and a half years old. Her mom was working that summer for the company where my mom was working and so I had my first real babysitting job.

I can't remember how many days a week I babysat and I don't remember exactly how much money I made... but it seemed like a lot to a 13 year old. I remember that with the money I made I bought my first CD player and my first CD's. The first CD I bought was the Greatest Hits of the Righteous Brothers. I know... that's not what most 13 year olds would get but I have always loved Oldies.

I think I was a pretty competent babysitter but the summer did not go without incident. That summer I was also taking some enrichment classes at a local college. I don't remember exactly what I was taking... but it was probably something like etiquette or acting or something like that. Well on the mornings when I was taking those classes, my younger brother would watch after L. One day when my mom was bringing me back to the house, my brother came out the front door to meet us and shut the front door behind him... accidentally locking the door.

There was then a confused child inside the house and a freaked out babysitter and her brother outside the house. L. could not unlock their complicated front door lock and so my brother and I had to wait until her mom could get back to the house to unlock the door. Fortunately they had a window in their front door and we could see L. and she could see us. We kept her occupied and it all worked out just fine.... but it was pretty scary.

One way we kept her occupied was by singing the theme song to The Elephant Show. The lyrics were as follows:

Skinnamarinkydinkydink. Skinnamarinkydoo. I - Love - You!
Skinnamarinkydinkydink. Skinnamarinkydoo. I - Love - You!
I love you in the morning and in the afternoon.
I love you in the evening, underneath the moon.
Skinnamarinkydinkydink. Skinnamarinkydoo. I - Love - You!
Skinnamarinkydoo, I - Love - You -- Too!. (Boop, boop, ee-doo)

There were little hand motions to go along with it too. I don't know how many of you ever saw The Elephant Show... but think Barney only with a giant elephant instead of a purple dinosaur and you have the result of a somewhat less annoying tv show. We watched a lot of Elephant Show that summer.

I also got hooked on the soap opera All My Children that summer. I would spend the night with their family sometimes and L.'s mom watched All My Children. This was long after L. had gone to bed but I would watch it with her some nights. This was the days when the characters of Haley and Brian were on All My Children. Who knows what became of the actor who played Brian but Haley was played by Kelly Ripa.

I was also not the greatest cook at the time (who am I kidding I am still not the greatest cook). Anyways, L. and I ate a lot of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese that summer. This still constitutes a well balanced meal in my house and apparently it does for L. as well. She told my mom not long ago that when she got married she was going to have it at her rehearsal dinner. She's not getting married any time soon so she might change her mind between now and then... but I say go for it! :-)

I can't believe that L. is now a Senior in High School. Obviously we both survived the summer and lived to tell about it. It was a great experience for me and L. is still one of my favorite people in the world. I love her to death!

So depending on your definition of a job... that was my first job. For more Time Travel Tuesday participants, visit Annie at My Life as Annie.

Catching Up

Anyone out there still reading? I wouldn't blame you if you weren't. :-) If blogging was a job I would have been fired long ago. But once again I am resolving to do better. I even have a few blog topics I am putting in reserve for the moment.

But before I move on to any of those topics I thought I would share a few events from last weekend. Last Friday afternoon, my friend Andrew and I took engagement pictures for my roommate and her fiance. Andrew ended up taking most of the pictures and I became more of the photographers assistant... and the getaway driver. :-) We went to a couple of fancy areas of town (including a golf course and yacht club) where we weren't technically supposed to be... and we certainly couldn't just park in the grass... so I drove around part of the time while they took pictures. Here is one of the pictures that I took.

Not the greatest... but not terrible. The ones that Andrew took are much better. I have a very nice camera... but I have serious lens envy. My lens is not bad... but it is not as nice as I would like either. Here is Andrew's lens... and Andrew.

I have already added it to my wish list on Amazon. Now I just need to come up with the $600 and the justification for purchasing it. :-)

We took photos for probably two hours in different places in town and in several different outfits. It was a lot of fun and I think they got some great pictures to use.

On Saturday my parents came into town and my brother offered my parents tickets to the home opener for my college alma mater... the University of Alabama. My mom wasn't interested in going so my dad and I went to the game. We won 52-6 so it was not the world's most exciting game but we had a lot of fun.

I hope everyone else is having a great week. On top of being post lazy I have also been comment lazy... but I promise I am still reading.