Organization (or lack thereof) and some canning

I love having my kids home.  I love hanging out with them, I love doing things with them, I love having them figure out their own damn things to do when I am puttering around at home.  The only thing is that I don't like taking them out on stupid errands because I forgot to buy dish soap or sugar yesterday at the store.  It's not like it is super hard or anything--they can both buckle themselves in and everything--but still.  Getting them loaded up and then going out into the absolutely huge (for our small town) supermarket to get sugar and dish soap is quite exhausting.  And for some reason, they start to act like maniacs in the store, and I become one of those grouchy moms grousing at them to just stay in the cart.  I often end up going to the Natural Food Store or the Farmers' Market (a very cool little shop that smells like must and mold but stocks exclusively local produce and can provide you with a bushel of local peaches to make jam out of for pennies) but I can't quite bring myself to spend six dollars on dish soap.  And sometimes those places don't have sugar.

David has been wearing his new helmet pretty much non-stop.  This is not the greatest picture of either child, but it is the only one that David was willing to be in. 

The reason this came up is that we made peach jam yesterday.  After swimming lessons, and the obligatory hour and fifteen minutes after at the pool, which I find completely exhausting, we went to the grocery store to buy supplies (more mason jars, pectin) for canning.  But, as usual, I didn't have a list, and forgot that we needed dish soap and sugar, which I didn't realize until I had peeled the peaches and gotten the big water bath canner started.  The very thought of loading up the kids once again to go to the store was extremely overwhelming, and actually, Jesse had taken the van out to a work dinner, so I actually couldn't.  Luckily, I have awesome neighbors, who were willing to lend me five cups of sugar.  Not one cup, five (the pectin won't work unless you have enough sugar, unless you buy a certain kind of pectin, which I didn't buy, obviously, which is too bad--not because I am against sugar in jam--it's not like we eat it by the spoonful--but because it actually tastes more peachy and good with less sugar).  So they saved the day, and we made peach jam, and canning is enormously satisfying, and the kids both helped, and David put his hand on the hot stove before I could stop him, but was okay, and we went to the store today to get dish soap and sugar.  The other problem with going to the grocery store is that it is so freaking cold in there.

I probably shouldn't even post this picture.  Remember how we were out of dish soap?  Well, the vinegar sort of did it...but not totally.  Also, things get messy at my house.

I would say that the solution would be to make a list, but I have known that for the like fifteen years that I have been responsible for buying my groceries, and particularly for the six years that I have been a mother, but I can only sporadically make it happen.  For the most part, although I have pretty serious organizational failings (I took adderal until I began to have children) I do have a fairly organized mind, and can generally do it....but not completely, clearly.

But, we made jam, kicking off the summer canning process.  Elsa has loved it for the past two years, and David is happily getting into it too.