If you’ve been to our orchard you know that we sell honey. We don’t actually extract the honey ourselves…one of the neighbors of the Kroncke Road Orchard does that. So, we have to jar the honey after we get it in really large buckets and put into sellable quantities. Jared is in charge of this and lately he has recruited a few helpers…have I mentioned my husband is adorable!

Cedi picks out the clean jar and hands it to Papa. Papa fills it with honey. Capri puts the lid on.

Cedi attaches the label!

And then we have honey to sell! It was so much fun watching them all work together…I don’t think I have Papa’s patience for that but the girls sure do love to help!

Tonight, Cedi and I were watching 'The Little Mermaid' and we asked Pappa Daddy (Jared) to get us each a piece of string cheese since he was over in the kitchen. He came about four-feet from us and then tossed me the string cheese. I have no hand-eye coordination so obviously I didn't catch them both.

One of the string cheeses' amazingly fell in the crack of our sofa that is next to impossible to retrieve things from (we've already pulled a few upholstery staples out to retrieve the remote). Now the fun began. Of course, the string cheese was not reachable at first (but we did find our missing DVD remote!). Jared decided he would lift the other end of the couch up to shake the cheese over the side more...in doing this he knocked over our lamp which proceeded to shatter all over the floor. I immediately grabbed both the girls and held them clothes while Jared stopped his search for the string cheese and swept the glassy mess up....I then handed the girls to him while I vaccuumed-just in case (glad I did).

One more lift of the couch and the string cheese has been found!

When Pappa Daddy (Jared) gave the almost lost cheese stick to Cedi, her response was, "I don't want this cheese."

A perfect ending to a fun search! We had to laugh.

Well, we did it again. Jared, the girls and I made more caramel apples tonight! Yum! We're trying not to make too many ahead of time because the humidity is not good for them, but we still want to make sure we don't run out for you. The key to getting something done efficiently is to make Jared do it by himself for a half hour. By the time you come down to help he has a completely new system devised that makes the whole operation go SO much faster. I think we really have it down now. He just made a comment to me tonight that he wants his mom to make caramel apples with him one night just so she can see what a great system he has. I'm sure she will be proud as always!

Off to bed...well, maybe a little crafting first...we'll see!

Hello All! I keep telling Diane that we go on these trips just so I have more to right on this blog. This past weekend Jared's cousin Katrina got married in Prairie Du Chen (spelling?), WI, so Frank, Diane and Karma took one van, Jared, the girls and I took another. The wedding was beautiful...a bit warm, but beautiful. Frank and Diane had a hotel room for the night, Jared, the girls and I had decided we would just drive home since sleeping in a hotel room with small children is never really the most fun thing, and Karma was up in the air about what she would do. Well, after a fun night of dancing (Cedi was ADORABLE) we finally decided to hit the road around 8 and Karma came with us. We decided we would see how quick HWY 60 was were off. About 45 minutes along, a deer ran in front of the van and we hit it head on. Everyone was fine...the girls slept right through it, the van was not. We lost all of our radiator fluid at least...it was dark and difficult to tell. Luckily, Karma was a AAA member and we knew who to call. Unfortunately, there was absolutely NO cell service anywhere. No one was stopping to help either. So, we turned the heat on high, and slowly moved ahead. We stopped again a little way up where we had thought we'd found some service, but no luck. A young gentleman did stop this time and tried to help but his cell didn't work either. He did inform us that there was a gas station just up the way about 3 miles.

We decided to go for it and we made it there just before it closed. I called the county sheriff's to report the incident and they sent a deputy out. Again, we had NO cell service, the gas station had closed and the pay phone was out of order. I wandered around the gas station parking lot for the next hour trying to get some service. I was attacked by a giant moth (don't worry, I was okay) and saw a cute stray cat during the process. Finally the trouper offered to take me in his squad car up to some higher ground. A few minutes away we found service and I tried AAA. I got through. Then they put me on hold and of course I lost the service. We drove around some more until I finally got some service just down the road from the gas station. It turns out AAA would only cover 5 miles of towing and we had no way to go anywhere since there were no hotels around, no cabs, and we had two small children who have to ride in car seats. I called Jared's uncle Dave and he said he would come to get us and we would deal with the van the next day.

When I got back to the car to report the news to the fellow car mates, we decided it would be best just to sleep in the van until Frank and Diane were well enough to pick us up. Jared ran around and finally found reception while standing on the roof of the BP and canceled our ride with Dave (thanks anyway Dave...we appreciate what you would have done for us!). We had no blankets in the van except for a baby quilt and some receiving blankets. Jared and I were still all dressed up from the wedding. We created some makeshift sleeping arrangements and settled in for the night. When we finally got Capri settled Cedi woke up. She wandered around the van playing with random buttons until Karma finally got her to sleep by reading her the book 'Horns to Toes' at 2am. If we thought sleeping in a hotel would them was going to be tough...it was nothing compared to all of us sleeping in a minivan! We fitfully slept for a few hours until we decided it would be okay to call Frank and Diane at 4:40 in the morning. They came right away and we are all safely home.

As always, we had to have some excitement on our little trip.

Can't wait to see you all in a few weeks for apple season!

Take care!

This past weekend Jared, the girls and I were in Michigan to pick up the blueberries that we planned on planting at the Kroncke Road Orchard. When we arrived at Hartmann's Plant Company we discovered that not only did they not have anything ready for us, but they did not have ANY of the varieties that we had ordered. This was quite an annoyance because I had called three previous time to confirm the order and pick up time…including the previous day, only to be told everything was ready. So, they ended up finding us other varieties of blueberries that should grow in this area and they threw in forty extra plants as well. They loaded our van with as many plants as they could (200) and shipped the rest for free since they were not prepped in the boxes they had told us they would be.

Once we left we were still upset about what had just happened and were just mindlessly following the directions of the GPS. About twenty or so minutes into the drive I realized we were heading north…we needed to get to Wisconsin, not Canada so this didn’t make too much sense. Earlier in our trip though, the GPS kept trying to take us off of the freeway and we ignored it thinking the freeway would be faster only to be stuck in construction for thirty to forty-five minutes. After that incident I decided to believe the GPS. Well, it continued to take us farther north and we finally realized that when we had chosen ‘fastest route’ the GPS figured that the fastest route to Wisconsin was if you took the ferry. At this point, we were almost to the dock and figured we might as well check it out and see if that’s what we wanted to do. Also, the girls really did not want to be in the car anymore. Just because nothing could possibly go our way at this point in the trip, when we arrived at the dock, they were just closing the gates and the ferry was leaving…we had missed it by a mere five minutes. The next one wasn’t going to be loading for over five hours. We had a decision to make…either wait it out and let the girls play at the beach or throw them back into the van and drive through Chicago at rush hour. We decided to wait it out. The rest of the day went smoothly…Cedi really enjoyed the sand…she even tasted it (she didn’t enjoy that quite as much) and the ferry ride was really nice. We finally arrive home just after 10. One thing we learned was that next time we were going to chose the option ‘cheapest route’ instead of ‘fastest’.

After my sophomore year of college I was lucky enough to be hired at the civil engineering firm, Mayo Corporation, as an intern. My job as intern required for me to be at work early in the morning, usually by 6 or 6:30. Most people you know would be crabby and need a cup of coffee before you could talk to them—not me. I am a morning person. Every morning I was extremely (and I must emphasize, extremely) bubbly and talkative. From a distance I had seen Jared laughing and talking with the other guys at the firm, but whenever I would come in the room he would quiet up and usually leave. At first, I just thought I was too hyper and happy in the mornings for him to handle, but later I found out that he was just shy around girls. Things all changed for Jared and I one night after work when everyone went to the ‘Come Back In’ for a “Safety Meeting” and a few beers after work. A group of people decided to play darts, but everyone had to have a partner. By the luck of the draw, Jared and I became partners. A few beers took away Jared’s shyness and we realized that we really clicked. After that, we laughed and joked at work all the time and soon started dating.
That fall, I came to pick apples at the orchard and help Jared out. He had just bought the place (formerly Hazard’s Orchard) earlier that year and was realizing just how much there was to do. I proved myself as a good worker and hit it off with his parents right away. In fact, the first time I walked into Jared’s parent’s house, I looked around and saw all the crafty things his mom did and thought to myself, “This woman is going to like me.” Since it was apple season, Diane (Jared’s mom) did not have much time to put something together for lunch so we all sat down and enjoyed some hot dogs. Diane still brags that was our first meal together and I still came back.

Jared and I continued dating until the next apple season when Jared took me to the top of a hill that over looked the country side and proposed. Of course, I said “yes.” I still had two years left to finish college so we decided to wait until I graduated to tie the knot. We were married on June 25th, 2005, a beautiful summer day and have been happy ever since.