I'm so domestic!

We were in town for a week and had lots to do but it was all fun stuff ...like having several families down from the Eden House for a meal, or going over to Dan and Janet's for a meal (since we haven't seen them in about 2 months!!!!).

I love talking with our kids on Skype amd getting caught up on their news, but especially the times when their babies are awake and we get to see them. It's amazing to Glenn and me how much Jazmine and Alec have grown just in the past 3-5 weeks since we've seen them!

Speaking of our kids, today is our son's birthday! We called Chris this morning at 7:30 am his time in New Jersey, but he was already at the hospital doing his rounds so all we could do was leave him our birthday wishes. We hope he had a good day and knows that we wish we could be there to celebrate with him, Kate and Jaz.

Judit, my Hungarian friend, invited me over to pick figs off her tree so I hauled Glenn over there on Thursday with my jumbo-size Tupperware bowl. I've never eaten a fig by itself before but I loved Glenn's mother's strawberry fig preserves that she used to make. I looked up the recipe on the internet and found that the figs never met a strawberry. What I mean is, there are no strawberries in the recipe but that you use strawberry jello (which I'm sure never met a strawberry either!) to flavor it.

Anyway, I cut up the figs (about 16 cups) and added 8 cups of sugar (yep, you read that right) and boiled them all together for about 30 minutes until it made a nice syrup and the figs were soft. I added 3 boxes of Jello (from America) and one strawberry gelatin packet (from Hungary), and one Sure-Jell (from America) and boiled for another 2 minutes.

While the preserves were still piping hot, I ladled them into canning jars, closed the lids tightly, and then placed the canning jars upside down in a basket lined with a thick beach towel (not that it matters to my fig story, but my mom and dad gave me that beach towel in 1994 so it has been around for a long time and we use it often. It's especially nice because it is a double-wide beach towel!)

Then we wrapped it again with a blanket and stuck it out of the way to let it cool down slowly for 3 days. The hot preserves and the slow cooling down process insures that a nice vacuum seal forms on the jars and then the jars can be stored in a cabinet until ready to eat.

And now I have 13 jars of strawberry fig preserves to share and enjoy for the next 3 years!!!! But aren't they pretty??? I feel so domestic!

Glenn and I left for Germany on Sunday morning for a week.

We flew Malev, the Hungarian airline, on a 7:55 am flight to Frankfort. It's a pretty nice airline, but I got tickled when I saw the tiny amount of lettuce on my cheese sandwich!

We are attending an Emigrate, a conference for our personnel who have been on the field about 9-12 months; kind of a refresher course on strategy and vision, and a time of encouragement. We are doing member care appointments with everyone.

And when we got to Frankfort, I was tickled again when I saw this sign that points to "Other Directions"!!! What??? Some things are just funny to me, and this was hilarious!

Well, off to bed. Morning comes early here and I've got a full day tomorrow. I'm having a great time getting to know all these "new" folks since it is a pretty small group (18 people, plus those of us who are facilitating, speaking or working). We head home on Friday.

Have a great week!