A Wedding, A Walk and Apricots

Prepare for an extra long post!

Here are some pics I took of my brother's wedding....

The Vows

The Rings

The Kiss

The Happy Couple

The Bride

Cutting the Cake

New Family Pic

Our New Family

After getting back from Concordia, I headed straight for OKC.  Stephen did not go to the wedding, so I headed down there to spend the last of my vacation with him.  I went for a walk on Sunday and took a picture of what I call Horse Corner.  The house in on the other side of the trees on the left hand side.  This is a different neighbor that has a few horses.  The horses were on the other side of the trees that day, but here is a nice shot of where they hang out when they want shade.

After getting back from my walk, Stephen and I hit the backyard.  We picked lots of apricots from his two apricot trees.  There are so many of them and I hate to think these will be wasted.  We stopped by the new neighbor's house and offered them to stop by and pick as many as they wanted.  I got a small bucket and filled it up.  I am now making canned apricots and apricot jelly as I type this.  It's a three hour process and since I took a nap today, I figured I would get a post up in between tasks.

Apricots

I worked 12-10 yesterday for my first day back and was already off again today.  I went to lunch with a work friend, hit the YMCA and did an hour of cardio (walking, biking and elliptical) and then made supper.  I grabbed a little nap around 7 and slept until 9.

The apricots in light syrup are done and the popping noise from the lids have popped!  Yay!  My first successful canning venture!  The apricot jelly is now in the boiling bath water and will be done soon.  These beautiful orange fruit look and taste so divine. I love the color these give off.  I will get some photos tomorrow in natural light so you can see how vibrant they are.  Not to mention the apricots smell heavenly!  The jelly will go nicely on toast or English muffins.  I packed everything in the small jars, even the apricots in light syrup.  Since there is just two of us, no sense in wasting any fruit by packing it in big jars and not being able to eat all of it.   Not that it should be a problem... but for my first time, I wanted to do smaller portions.

I had a wonderful week of vacation and I am looking forward to another week coming up in mid-July.  I am not planning on going anywhere except Oklahoma.  I have not heard on a start date for my new store, but it may be as early as next week.  I hope it's soon.

Hope you all had a fantastic week!

Laters.