"Oh it's pear canning time in Vancouver..."

My little helpers

"Oh it's pear canning time in Vancouver."(There is actually a tune to this line, and I don't know what the original song was, but growing up it was a common song for us to sing in the garden or canning or working. Eg: "Oh it's peach canning time in Oregon City," or "Oh it's cherry picking time in Oregon City." You get the idea, so I am passing the ditty along to our kids.)

Check out these tasty looking jars.

Roger asked if he could take a picture and I said yes, hence the closeup.

Roger and Allen were troopers and helped out. Allen had a hard time peeling, so his job was to fish the peels out of the sink while Roger peeled the blanched pears. I canned with the boys on Wednesday and got 14 quarts. Today my sister came up to help and we finished off the boxes I had gotten and got 20 more quarts. Whew! That's a whole lot of pears! We will divide them with my sister and they will be much enjoyed. :)

These are the 20 quarts from the second day of canning.

I should also note that I learned a valuable canning lesson today. Despite many warnings, I finally broke a jar in the canner. :) I generally pour boiling syrup over my cold fruit, so sticking the jars into boiling water has never been a problem. Well today, my syrup wasn't quite hot enough and a jar broke when I put it in. Oops. We salvaged the pears, but I've learned a good lesson. :)

Wednesday afternoon, after all the boys hard work ;) they spent some time skateboarding out on the patio. They got so hot and sweaty that I made them take a 10 minute reading break. They opted to take their books outside, and I looked out the sliding glass door to find them thus.

Boys are so fun!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!