Book Club and plum jelly

I am so excited about book club after our first get together tonight! For those who aren't in the area or part of epic (too bad for you...), our coffee talk book club will be starting Captivating by John and Stasi Eldredge. It's a book I've read before, and I am glad to be reading again with all these women. It will be nice to hear other opinions and critiques of the book, so I can learn more about myself as a woman and creation of God. Plus, I'm the youngest (or one of the youngest, at least) of those at dinner tonight, so it will be really great learning from women with more life experience, who will have insights into the book that I have never thought of. I would also love to read it with you! If you're interested, you can read along with all of us, and post your thoughts on the chapters either here or on Brandi's blog. There's also a reading schedule on her blog.

My mom is one of the coolest women I know. She's incredible, and I'm so glad I'm her daughter (even if I used to pretend I was adopted. If you've ever seen my mom, you know that there's no way I could claim that- we look EXACTLY alike). Anyway, my mom goes through all sorts of phases with things that she makes. We're both very creative people, but we both can't focus on one thing too long. So mom has gone through the soap making phase, the clay phase, the glass etching phase and the jelly making phase, among others. And when she gets bored of one, she picks up another one again. While in San Jose this past weekend, I helped my mom pick plums from the backyard plum tree (and start the jelly making process. Let me tell you... this plum tree is crazy! It absolutely erupted with plums this year, to the point that they had to prop up branches because they couldn't support the weight of the fruit. So, we picked plums, and more plums, and more plums, and there were still hundreds upon hundreds left on the tree.

Here's our haul...

... and here is just one branch of the tree. After picking all those plums the tree still looks like this.

Oh, and if I can brag on myself for just a minute: I am a computer genius! Well, not actually, but I'm still pretty proud of myself. Like I posted a couple days ago, my parents gave us their old computer, and I've gotten everything set up on it and transferred over from both Kyle's old computer and the laptop all by myself. Now, that may not seem like too much, but if you knew how much technology hates me, you would be impressed too. :)