Ok, before I say anything, I just have to say that morning sickness BITES. I'm so tired (and I know my family is tired) of being sick all the time, tired all the time and bitchy all the time! I'm not completely sure that everyone will still like me when I return to normal. Somehow I was lucky enough to avoid all this with Ethan and Gwen and I didn't realize how fortunate I was.

On to more interesting things. Sunday, we went to my Aunt Deanne's house and made cider! My Eastern Washington family was able to come as well, so we had a blast playing and talking with everyone. The weather was dreadful, but we made the best of it.

The men moving the huge canopy from my Mom's to Aunt Deanne's. We had started out with a small blue one, but it quickly became evident that it wouldn't be enough protection.















You can see that my Mom is already soaked and we hadn't even started!













Gathering apples off my Aunt Deanne's trees. I believe one tree is Winesap and the other Fuji.














Aunt Daralyn, living in the apple capital of the US, brought over 250 (?) lbs of assorted apples.














We gave all the apples a dip in mild bleach solution, then a water rinse before processing.














Containers waiting to be filled. My Mom didn't have any milk cartons so she brought old pickle jars (giggle).














Diane (my Grammy's sister) and Aunt Margaret cutting up apples to go into the grater.














Brynne,I'm sorry darlin! She told me that I better tell her before I took a picture of her in it, but I didn't. This is us setting up the grinder/pressing/storing pieces.



















You feed quartered apples into the grater while someone cranks (I was feeding, Kwinton was cranking). The apples tend to fly out, hence our hands covering the top.














The shredded apple falls into the pressing container...














When the container is full, you twist down the top, pressing juice out, where it falls into a tray, then into cheesecloth and through a strainer (removing big pieces, seeds, etc)...




















and when there is enough cider in the catch bin, you ladle out into jugs or, in this case, cups :)














The kids were playing in the rain and picking apples while we were working. All the kiddies were soaked through.














Poor little Cedric took a fall. This picture was taken while I was running to him, hence the blurriness. However, I include it because he was totally unharmed (and not all that wet) because his baseball cap bill kept him from hitting the ground. He got right up without a peep! What a trooper!




















Ethan was cold and cranky. He also came home with a bad cough :( Luckily it doesn't look like it will move into anything else at this point.














More and more cutting, stacking and grinding.














At one point, the weather got so bad that rain was sheeting through the tent and the canopies almost blew away. You can see in the background how the trees are being blown around.















All in all, we ended up with 13 gallons of cider, which was less than the 18 we expected. We have some ideas for next year, mainly, to cut the apples smaller (we did a few batches with food processed apples and got tons more juice).

Oh, and on Monday I went for my dating ultrasound and got to see the baby. That's right baby, singular. No twins. Which is perfectly fine by us! The measurements indicated the baby was a week older than my assumed due date, so that puts me at 7 1/2 weeks about, due on 5/23/08, which is Michael and Michelle's birthday! Just so you know, that "bubble" on the right side is the yolk sac, which helps support the baby until the placenta is fully in place and functioning. It is not a mini jet-pack.