So I’m sitting here wondering where the summer went. I feel like we’ve crammed two months worth of activities into July alone. Several times last week I went to the calendar thinking it was already August as a result.
We left town right as school got out this year for the kids. We brought home some cousins to stay with us after that trip and then we drove back a second time to Idaho. We had one more trip to Las Vegas for a family event the 3rd weekend in July. Now I’m sitting here with the vacation and traveling done, looking at the calendar and realizing my kids start school in 14 days and feeling rather dazed.
So naturally, I redirect my thoughts to all the future things I want to get done, etc.! Before I know it the weather will be great again and I’ll be balancing my time with outside yard and garden time. There’s so much I want to do.
I’m also finding myself longing to get back into some projects that I can wrap up. My photo project is moving back up to the front of the list. I want to get all my backups organized, tagged, etc. and I want copies of all my new digital photos to have paper copies in the photo books too.
I’ve recently thrown baking into my hobby list of things I want to improve on. I baked my first loaf of homemade bread last week. I’ve made a lot of things from scratch, but bread was always more intimidating to me and it’d always been so much easier to pick up a loaf when shopping at the store. It was much easier than I was expecting and it’s been received extremely well. I’m getting ready to branch out into specialty and dessert breads.
Before I know it I’ll be celebrating kid’s birthdays, Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas. Time flies.
Tonight brought a happy surprise. My daughter has been begging me for quite a while to make her favorite dessert. It’s a miniature chocolate raspberry torte from one of her favorite dinner places, P.F. Changs. We bought some shot glasses and mini spoons shortly after the restaurant started offering their individual sized desserts. We’ve had fun doing various types at home, but to date I haven’t done her beloved chocolate with raspberry sauce. So tonight I decided to tackle it for her. I was going to make devil’s food chocolate cake but when I did a search online I found a copycat recipe for the Chang’s version so I used that. The flourless chocolate cake was dreamy and super easy too. My happy addition was finding that my apple corer worked perfectly for gathering up small circle sizes of the cake to fit the shot glasses.
I decided as long as I was going to do the dessert I’d see if I could make my favorite dinner dish from there too, Mongolian Beef. I was so tickled at how well it turned out! It was worth sharing, especially for bookmarking the recipe for later! I even snapped a photo of the leftover dish and it turned out pretty good too! Yay for sweet success.
It’s always nice when you can start a week with some momentum of positive energy from the weekend. Saturday was a really productive day for me this weekend. By 11:00 a.m. I had mowed the front lawn, trimmed the bushes, harvested the garden and pulled the weeds.
We took a break for lunch at one of our favorite Mexican restaurants. The kids weren’t sure they wanted to go anywhere until we told them we’d be hitting the movie theater after to watch the movie my daughter’s been begging to see for what feels like forever - Confessions of a Shopaholic. The lunch was great and the show was much better than I was expecting. In fact, I’d go see it again and even apologized to Cid for dragging my feet so much on taking her to it.
Then it was back home to process and store the garden goods. I pulled out the old canning stuff that’s been collecting dust since I left Idaho and got to work.
My extra effort in planting paid off with nice, big carrots to work with this season. It took much less time than last year and they were easier to work with. These were vacuumed packed like last spring’s crop as we found that worked really well for keeping “crunchy” carrots (according to my son). My vacuum packer is now over 11 years old and I’m afraid that we’ll have to purchase a new one soon, but it has sure paid its dues! I wish we’d had one of these when I grew up as it’s a great way to preserve your crops in addition to bottling.
We decided to pickle the beets this time as my hubby said it’s his favorite way to eat them. Admittedly, it took me a minute to remember how to do this even looking at my recipe card. Thankfully, I found it a lot like riding a bike and the knowledge came back soon enough.
During this process my daughter asked why we were doing this. We explained that you can’t eat everything from your garden when it’s ready because it will go bad, but we don’t want to waste it. These methods allowed us to enjoy the vegetables all year long. Her mouth fell to the floor and she said, “A whole year?!” we giggled as we informed her that all the carrots we’ve eaten since last year at this time were from that same batch we’d stored. It’s fun to see your kids start to get it.
Sunday was a nice day and I even refilled the cookie jar before bed!
There is so much to be said for seeing the rewards of your labors. It’s such a boost!
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Have I mentioned that I love gardening?! These little guys are only 8 days old.
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If I had a way of recording the “just missed that moment with my camera” I think I’d have a book! *giggle* I looked out the window Saturday morning and saw the perfect picture of father and son working on the pool together. I wanted to snap a picture of it to share but but the time I got the camera they’d both moved. *murmur* I wish there were a camera implant in my eye so I could just tell my brain to capture a moment! Some of the best pictures are the ones that you’re simply not ready to take when the opportunity presents itself. But I digress, the point is I wanted that picture not just for the archives but also to blog our weekend as it was such a great general capture of our Saturday mornings which are usually filled with yard and pool maintenance, a late morning shower and some lunch related outing.
Thankfully my efforts of keeping my son home from school on Friday when his immune system appeared to be weakening was a good call. We were able to avoid any sickness and enjoy our weekend - yay!
One of our new favorite places to go is the San Tan Village. It’s a new development that combines such an odd and fun combination of dining, entertainment and shopping. It feels a little like walking down 5th Avenue in NYC (except with misters and a fraction of the people) but combines so many other fun elements in a new and unique way. I’ll have to take some more pictures next time we’re there (another missed moment eh?!) So we went to a new place for lunch called Cantina Laredo, which was great and allowed us to take in some fun Olympic events, then hit the theater for the movie and ended the afternoon outing with a stop at Best Buy to purchase the much longed for:
I wanted to share a picture of the family rock band hard at play but I again missed a few of my key photo moments so I’ll have to repent for that later. Suffice it to say I greatly enjoyed watching all three of them concentrate like crazy and rock out. Blake’s been holding out on me. *snicker*
We also got to pick up my old computer (thank you warranty!) so I can add that to the success list. It seems a little sluggish and slow but at least it’s working right and devoid of blue screens and extreme fan volume. I’m happy to have another computer for the kids to use. I’m a little stingy with mine. *snort* It was indeed a hardware failure and the paperwork says they changed the mother board. Darn thing wasn’t even three years old. Oh well, at least we got it fixed without paying for repairs. I don’t know how people do it though because they had my computer for just over 2 weeks. If I hadn’t had a replacement I’d have died for sure! I couldn’t live that long without my computer. It made me wonder if they just assume customers will have other computers to use while they take their time repairing them? I still love my Mac and have adjusted very easily. The right click and mouse wheel actually felt clunky and weird yesterday!
I even stole a few minutes to update some more of my shared files for teaching children yesterday. I missed a Sunday afternoon nap but all in all it was a great weekend.
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I couldn’t do this in Idaho, not this time of year anyway.
My 5 year old son was so delighted to help me pick and shell the peas that he kept exclaiming what a good farmer he was. He’d pop as many in his mouth as he’d drop in the bowl and that delights me given that he once threw up a bite of carrots just to prove to me how much hated them.
I love the helping stage he’s in and especially helping with garden and yard stuff. I grew up with that element and I’m grateful to have it to any degree in my kid’s lives. It’s wonderful for kids to plant a seed, help it grow, keep the weeds from it and then enjoy the fruits of their labors. In our world today there are so few accomplishments that we can see and touch. I love teaching my kids the important lessons gardening can provide and I love that I have kids who enjoy learning them.
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I get so many questions and comments this time of year about my gingerbread houses and cookies. It seemed appropriate to share what I do here for anyone interested!
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It was the last thing I had time for today. But how on earth can you say no to those baby blue eyes pleading with you to “Please, please mom can we make a gingerbread man? I’ve never ever tasted one in my whole life!”
Sometimes you just have to make time for things like this.
Clearly he’s delighted. As we dressed the snowflakes, trees and teddy bears with frosting he kept saying “Mom you are so awesome!” Now that’s more payment than you can deposit in any bank and it lasts longer too! So with all that praise I pulled out the big guns and wrote his name on one of the cookies. He gobbled it up with sheer delight.
I decided to share his picture here so his teacher can see it. He wants so much for her to see it but was very worried with how to do that because if he tried to take it to school he might break it. (You gotta love this kid who thinks of everything.) So I told him we’d take a picture to share. You see, they’ve been reading books at school about the gingerbread boy all week. On Monday he’s going to run away and the class is going to try to find him. Friends and relatives in other states are invited to send a letter or postcard pretending to site the gingerbread boy sharing where they spotted him and what he was doing. Then they will mark those letters on a world map as they search for him. If you want to join in the fun send me an e-mail or leave your discovery notes in the comments leaving me the state where he was seen. I’ll print them out and send them in for him.
How can I not be overjoyed that I took time to make a gingerbread boy with him? Just look at those eyes!
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