Christian's Birthday

   We celebrated Christian's third birthday this past weekend.  Andy had picked peaches and gone to the farmers market on Friday evening, so I had two crates of peaches that didn't sell and two crates of seconds (bruised peaches or peaches with bug holes and spots on them).  My plan was to get up early Saturday morning and turn all those peaches into peach butter before 11:00 so I'd still have plenty of time to get lunch on for family coming in for the party.  At around 9:00am, I went to our big chest freezer to dig out some ground beef.  I smelled a funny smell and noticed juice in the bottom of the freezer.  A frantic glance around revealed meat thawing out, gallons of fruit juice turning to liquid and worst of all, 46 quarts of peaches and 32 quarts of sweet corn getting slushy with thawing ice crystals!!!  The first and most distressing thought that went screaming through my brain was, "ALL THAT WORK IS GOING TO WASTE!"  All the work and all those hours on my feet that I'd put into putting up hundreds and hundreds of peaches, and dozens of ears of corn was going to be ready for the garbage in a matter of hours!  I guessed that the freezer had quit working a couple days ago, and one more day would have ruined a lot of the food in there!  I was thanking the Lord that I caught it when I did!  Andy and I started unloading it, and I began going through every item checking for ruined food.  Andy ran to Lowes to get a new freezer and, come to find out, all the appliances were on sale!  Plus, he had a 25% discount card in his wallet that he put towards a new freezer as well!  It was almost as if the Lord knew we'd need a new freezer and made everything go on sale that weekend!  :)  So while Andy was getting the freezer, I was unloading the broken one, and filling up our two refrigerator freezers and coolers, and cooking up some meat that had thawed but was still good.  Andy got back home and, don't ask me how...but he moved our huge 25 square foot chest freezer outside and loaded it onto the back of his truck by himself!  When we had put it IN our back room, it took three guys about an hour to move it.  Amazingly he didn't hurt his back!  While we were getting the freezers moved, our company showed up.  I hadn't even started lunch and it was 20 min to noon.  :)  My spotless kitchen now looked like a war zone, and boxes and bags of half frozen food was laying everywhere.  But, the nice thing about family is, you can just relax and be yourself.  They understood and we were able to get the mess cleaned up, lunch cooked, and the party went on as planned.  Christian had a great time!  Thanks Mamaw, Edi, and Grandma for all the gifts!!!  

   Christian asked me the other day if I was old.  I smiled and said that I wasn't.  He then asked if Grandma was old.  I replied, "Well, she's getting old."  Then I said, "Great Mamaw Price is older than Grandma."  Christian didn't hesitate as he came back with, "Great Mamaw Price is all the way old!"  :) :)  :)