I am frustrated today;  the only reason for this is because six of my thirty-one jars of tomatoes unsealed after a week of being sealed.  What is it with me this year?  I can't seem to have a positive canning experience!  (Well, I have, but it's like every other one is bad.) GRRRRRR!  I don't know what's going on.  The last batch of just tomatoes I canned were from tomatoes I'd picked from my garden (green and everything) before the freezes a month ago.   I wonder if there isn't some bacteria on them that isn't killed through a hot water bath?  Don't know.  Last year, I actually washed my tomatoes in a bleach/water combination.  It helped keep my tomatoes clear from spots and helped them turn red faster.  And, none of those tomatoes un-sealed.  So, maybe that's the trick? The bleach helps kill the bacteria that the boiling water can't? Well, today I'm going to wash the rest of my tomatoes I have in that bleach/water solution.  I'm hoping that will be my answer.  Wish me luck!

In other news: 
Matt will finish combining our soybeans today;  it's going okay, I guess. We're borrowing our neighbors' combine and he's had to fix a lot on it, but oh well, at least he knows how to fix stuff!  Yesterday,  he had a lot of help;  our neighbor from the north, Arne, came by and helped him fix the header (really nice!) and then he gave us two more watermelons he'd grown in his garden......; he also had help from Laverne, the man who sold us our farm.....Laverne came out after lunch and said he was wondering if Matt had anything he needed help with, like discing or cultivating - Matt used him to help dump trucks in a bin so he could keep on combinbing.  Thank God for neighbors! We're lucky!

Clarence was "shopping"  last night with Adina's shopping cart; I asked him what he was shopping for and he told me, "tractors, pickups, loaders, trailers, fencing gloves". I thought it was darling.  He was shopping for those things that would obviously never fit in a little shopping cart, but the idea was that he was shopping.  He makes my day!

Adina is learning how to say some "B" words.  We've been working on baby, which she can say ok; brother, which she starts with a "b" and then rolls her tongue around in her mouth a little; bath, which she just says baaaa;  and, she can also say hot....she says ha.  But, she knows what hot means; when I'm baking or something and she's around in the kitchen, I say, "Stand back, Adina, it's really hot."  She just backs up and smiles and says, "ha, ha, ha."  She's learning so much right now; she understands almost everything I tell her, but she just can't say much. 

Today, we're going to play outside, feed Dolly, and I'm hoping to bake a little something (I've been wanting to try scones).

Hope your day is fabulous! I've got a whole bunch of new pictures to put up, but it seems to take so long to upload that I haven't found the time to do it yet.  Stay posted, though...I'll try do it soon! :)