The last day of basketball

Today was the third and final day of Caroline's basketball tournament. The children have been practicing and playing games against local schools since December.

She didn't know she was being Rockyesque.

Waiting for the game to start.

C for Caroline!

A quick trip to Mexico

Today dh had a follow up visit to his dentist in Mexico and Caroline had a consultation for orthodontia. Here are a few pictures of interesting things we saw.

Pretty painted houses just over the border.

A sign with "International Border" on it always excites me.

If you look at the gray band on the mountain in the distance you are looking at the actual border.

Caroline waiting sort of patiently for the orthodontist. He was pretty late, but this is Mexico and I don't think schedules run the same as they do in the United States.

We are so accustomed to every.single.thing in the US being made idiot-proof that the sight of dozens of holes like right in the middle of the sidewalk was kind of surprising and definitely made me pay attention to where I was walking.

And I'm thinking this wiring might not pass code either.

We walked across the border, so while we were waiting in line to come back into the USA dh noticed this sign. We are pretty sure they have no idea there is a problem.

The close cars are going into Mexico and the far ones are going into the United States.

Heading into Mexico if you drive instead of walk.

Look closely and you can see a tail in this picture. About 20 miles north of the border there is a Border Patrol checkpoint where everyone has to slow down or stop and get a nod from the agent before continuing northward. One of the agents had a very energetic shepherd/retriever/?? on a leash who was obviously trained to sniff for drugs. They zipped back and forth between cars with the dog sniffing the left front wheel well of most of the cars and nearly all of them while the car was still rolling forward! It was very entertaining while we waited the 3 or 4 minutes to get our nod.

It was a pleasant trip and Caroline REALLY enjoyed having dh and me all to herself for the day.

The Velveteen Rabbit

Caroline and Elizabeth's class is reading the story of the Velveteen Rabbit, so each child was encouraged to bring his or her favorite stuffed animal to school today. This is Caroline's Cuddles and after I took this picture she made Cuddles a new dress out of fabric left over from one of the girls' dresses. So today Cuddles and Caroline wore dresses made of the same fabric. They were very cute.

Elizabeth brought her brown stuffed dog named Brownie. Not as much affection was shown toward Brownie today as there was toward Cuddles.

Lucky me!

Look what dh's Valentine surprise to me was!

It's silver with a small 18 kt gold heart with 6 tiny diamonds inside it, one for each of my children. I love it because it's pretty and modern and feminine and because my sweet dh gave it to me.

A little treat for my visiting teaching ladies . . . and my hubby

Yesterday I made ganache and today I made truffles from it. Then I packaged the truffles up with some dark chocolate-covered almonds and played Cupid, delivering them to some of my visiting teaching ladies. Last stop was dh's office and he was quite pleased. :-)

See the difference?

On the left is one of my oldest Kerr pint canning jars and on the right is one of my newest. The old one is very square and the glass is so thick my canning funnel doesn't fit down into it all the way. The new jar is thinner and rounded and doesn't interest me nearly as much!

By the way, I think the reason I have always preferred Kerr jars over Ball jars is because 1) my mom always used Kerr jars and 2) my name starts with a K and I loved to look at the pretty K on jars of fruit on the table when I was a child.

Sunday snooze

Caroline was a little sleepy so she set herself up right fine, don't you think?

Meal Plan Sunday

Monday: Spanish Eggplant from the freezer over rice

Tuesday: Valentine's Day Baked Zucchini Parmesan

Wednesday: Chicken with Mediterranean Vegetables

Thursday: Slow Cooker Turkey and Brown Rice Chili

Friday: Pizza

Market on the Move

Here in Arizona we have an unusual situation. Fresh produce is trucked up from Mexico and is inspected in Nogales, Arizona. Sometimes for one reason or another, the produce does not continue on its journey north. It might have started to go bad, it might be too dirty or have scratches on the surface of the produce, or the trucking schedules might not be set to pick it up. When the warehouse is full and another load is on its way, the warehouse will take the produce to the landfull. About two full trailer loads get dumped every day.

Market on the Move is sponsored by a group called The 3000 Club. Each week three trucks pick up this donated produce and bring it to rotating sites in Tucson and Phoenix. For a $10 donation, people can choose up to 60 pounds of produce. The rest goes to food banks. This is a tiny fraction of what I brought home today:

I brought home:

25 lbs of Roma tomatoes
6 large salad tomatoes
3 quarts of grape tomatoes
1 basket of cherry tomatoes
2 kinds of hot peppers
10 green bell peppers
8 red bell peppers
10 zucchini
10 yellow squash
13 small ears of corn
5 eggplants

The Roma tomatoes turned into 13 pints of diced tomatoes and 9 pints of salsa, along with some of the peppers.

The eggplant and more bell peppers turned into a Spanish eggplant dish for the freezer. You'll see that on the menu a couple of times over the next month or two.

Tomorrow some of the zucchinis will find their way into zucchini muffins for the freezer for our regular Monday muffin breakfasts.

We gave away a lot of the produce to our neighbor and a friend who provides us with delicious bakery bread for free every 2 weeks.

It was a busy day, but I'm feeling very satisfied.

That's what *I'd* like for breakfast too

Elizabeth saw this bag sitting near the computer. "Oh, Mom, I'll just have a bowl of that for breakfast."

Me too.