Sweet potatoes and the start of a monumental birthday!

Just as a small disclaimer: I'm starting this blog post 100% annoyed at this computer! My picture thumbnails are gone and I've tried any manner or settings to get them back with no success. So it's impossible to choose pictures for this post without an archaic, highly unsatisfactory method. And I've used more time that I wished to attempting, unsuccessfully to figure it out, when this isn't even the blog post I'm most interested in working on tonight. Sigh!

So I'm writing this on the evening of Jason's birthday and the day after mine. But the purpose of this is to share about the sweet potato digging day on Monday, the day before our birthdays came around again. Let's just say that the 12 3/4 bushels of gorgeous sweet potatoes were present enough. And what glorious digging!!! 

Unlike our white potato harvests, the sweet potato ones are going in the RIGHT direction (i.e. UP!). And not only are we getting more sweet potatoes but the quality is also skyrocketing. We used to have potatoes that clearly had to find their way through tight soil full or rocks. Now they are much more uniform and will be a delight to chop up. And even the voles didn't take a very high percentage. 

It was very fun for Terah to be able to dig ALL BY HERSELF. Then when Ivy joined us in the afternoon, she had a lot of fun joining Kali to learn how to dig (i.e. stand on the shovel and fall back on her butt in an attempt to dislodge large taters from the earth). It was a pretty fun digging party. 

They are now all cleaned up and in trays in the new curing room in our crawl space. We got those tucked away just in time to clean up and enjoy a birthday meal made by my mom on the deck. Following dinner, the girls headed over to Ivy's to sleepover and surprise her on the morning of her birthday. With kiddos away, Jason and I enjoyed a slow hike (due to me tweaking my back doing chores the morning of sweet potato digging - yes, horrible timing) to Hensley's Pond where we enjoyed leftover elderberry pie and pumpkin chocolate cheesecake with decaf coffee from the night before. 

It wasn't long after our return that plans for my birthday and Jason's were beautifully interrupted. But that's the subject of a forthcoming blog post!