Summer Food

I'm having a hard time coming up with summer menus. The last thing I want to do is stand by the hot stove and cook or bake. The second to the last thing I want to do is eat anything heavier than a potato chip.

This is a problem.

I've patched together an approximation of a menu despite my complete lack of motivation. So without further ado, here is what I have come up with:

Wednesday:
Cereal and fruit
Sandwiches and chips
Beans and cornbread with chocolate cobbler

Thursday:
Eggs in a basket with juice
Pasta salad and veggie sticks
Grilled chicken, green beans, tomato and salad

Friday:
Pumpkin bread
Lunch with Mom
Pizza and popcorn

Saturday:
Sausage links, french toast and fresh fruit
4th of July parties

Sunday:
Church
Out for lunch
Burgers, fries and watermelon

Monday:
Eggs and Toast
Tomato and biscuits
Chicken fingers, mac & cheese and green beans

Tuesday:
Cereal
PB&J sandwiches, chips and fruit
Bar-b-que, potato salad and brownies

Good ending to a Good week

Who knew that such a regular weekend could turn out to hold so much happiness? Lou and I have a standing Saturday night date. We are usually so tired from the previous hours of yard work that we just crash at the house and rent movies, but this week we had a PLAN.


One of the guys that works for the same place as Lou, Glen, and his wife, Karen (UAH voice teacher) were scheduled to be in a production together. Having missed the last one (Jesus Christ Superstar) I was ready to see them in action. Lou and I were opera virgins. We had heard the same opera song that everyone has, but has no idea that they were from an opera. I was super excited though. With good reason! It was FANTASTIC. I got to hear Glen sing the famous Vesti la giubba.

After church today we took the first family swim of the season. Our pool has been plagued with the million little things that have plagued us every year, only this year the little things were all hoses and filter parts and a cold spring slowed us down even more. Sigh. Anyway the pool is ready now!

Misha thinks we are NUTS to be out here in the heat.


Austin

Griffin

Carson


Lou cooked us some Bubba burgers for supper. YUM!


We made Big Macs. They are easy to make: Cheese (vegan in my case), lettuce, thousand island dressing and onion slices. Since our burger had the onion IN them we didn't add that to the tray.


Speaking of my tray... I won this cute tray at Laura's Uppercase Living party.


I could have spent a couple hundred bucks there easy, but I was good and left with my party gifts and THIS ordered.

What a fun week!

Bookwreck

I am a bibliophile to the core. There is nothing in this world I like more than books. Homeschooling gives me a nice excuse to have so many. I have occasionally been temped to admit that is one of my main reasons for homeschooling in the first place. LOL! Just kidding. I have books on everything from apostrophe placement to zoology and I LOVE it. There is one small problem: fitting them into the house.

For several years we had a nice sized book shelf and then last summer we added a friend for said bookshelf as we had gained another 6 years worth of books. The two were happy together, but they were definitely the odd couple. One was dark and tall and the other was six inches short and blond. Poor bookshelves. They just looked... bad. Mom mentioned last week that she was thinking of getting rid of her solid wood shelves so that Dad's new tv would fit in the niche. Ooooooh. Out of the kindness of my heart I offered the (much nicer) shelves a new home. :o)

Nathan and Lou got the shelf moved over here last Sunday. Has anyone ever mentioned that clearing up books is a lot of work? Well, no one warned me, so now you know. The new lady (she is too pretty to be male) is all set up in my living room and after two day of work.. it is coming along.



I am showing off all the crap on the floor as that is what isn't going to fit. Well, that and the stuff in the kitchen... Anyway, I LOVE the look of the new shelves. It really cleans up (LOL!) the look of the school area.

As for tall, dark and dusty, he is moving into my bedroom along with my fiction collection and the cute little blondy is going in G's room to hold games and children's fiction. Now if I can just figure out what to do with all those posters and maps...

First Day of Summer

Esther sent out an invite last week to join their family on a day out in Birmingham to tour the Golden Flake potato chip factory. I have been wanting to see it for a couple years, but Griffin was too young. Since he has since turned 5 (woohoo) we were able to go this time!

Here we are in our cunning hats.



The potato truck arrived while we were touring. Talk about a lot of spuds...



The starch from the potatoes is processed out somehow (I couldn't hear over the machines) and the starch is sent to other factories including paper and aerosol starch.



Peeling, washing, cooking the chips....







Then comes the BEST part...





Chips that are fresh out of the oil are AWESOME. The kids weren't the only ones chowing down! Hey, it was a RULE. You MUST eat all you want!




After a quick lunch stop we headed to the very center of Alabama.



Apparently Buford and his friends were there before us. Also the center of Alabama is in a grave yard. Niiiiice.




I had never considered constructing myself a pyramid. Elisabeth Seale and David Adams only needed the bottom to die happy.

We made a quick stop at the Heart of Dixie Railroad Museum. SOMEONE was happy...













I went a little Ansel Adams with some B&W shots.






At that point in the day it was just too hot to do anything that didn't involve water, so we made our way to Oak Mountain State Park. The wildlife rehabilitation center was on the way to the swimming area so we popped in there.











I did negotiate Esther's release from the cage in exchange for hitting the lake. I hope she got a good shot of the kids...

Last stop of the day... SWIMMING!

If you can't say anything nice...

Don't blog anything at all. Just kidding!

The last week has been crazy busy with VBS and family parties. The kids have spent the night at Mom's several times (to be dropped off early on her way to work) and we have run errands and even met friends at the park. It seems like the busier I get the more unhappy I become. I think it has to do with how my house suffers. PILES of dishes and laundry and no idea what is for dinner equal STRESS. Today was supposed to be spent Father's Day shopping with my Mom, but she called and told me she had a doctor's appointment she had forgotten. She would call after the appointment in the early afternoon. She just called. Sigh. I hate scheduling issues. I turned down a friend's day out at the swimming pool for this, didn't go grocery shopping and now it's too late for us to do much of anything. Sigh.

I'm gonna go clean something...

Green Acre Dreams

(The pictures today are not mine. They are swiped without permission off the net - hey at least I'm honest.)

I was just stepping out of the shower after mowing the yard yesterday morning, when I heard my Mom in the house calling to me. I wasn't too surprised since all three of my boys had spent the night with her the night before, however I knew she was leaving early to pick Tristan up so I wondered what was going on. She asked if I would be interested in coming with all the boys to pick up some milk from a local farm. I had a lot on my to do list (clean the boys' rooms, type up VBS scripts, clean up out back, plant sunflowers), but how could I resist the lure of a REAL farm?

We drove just out of the city and at the end of a country road there sat a little farm house with all the things I grew up with; huge barn for the animals, giant shed for the tractors and equipment, fence rows of differing kinds in all directions around landscape and, most of all, animals. The boys were so excited about just seeing the big Percherons in the field by the house. The farmer's wife was very kind and took the boys on a tour. We went into the shed where two Jersey calves were keeping each other company.

Since it was a dairy, and they don't use any hormones on their cows, the babies were bottle fed and one was very tame. The other was scared to death of the wiggly-giggly people that had taken the barn by storm. Mom showed the boys how the babies liked to suck on fingers. Only Austin would brave a try. The lady of the house then took us all out into a field where the Percherons were grazing and they came right up, happy for a pat on the nose and more than willing to let four little boys rub on them. It was so fun. We passed the beehives and got to see an empty box. There were bird feeders hung from the trees and a particularly large tree had a plank and rope swing from a low branch.

As we left Austin looked over at me and said, "Mom, NOW I know why you want a farm."

Is there anything better in this world than being loved AND understood? I only hope that one day I'll get my Green Acres and that the boys will still be young enough to enjoy it as much as I did growing up.

Huntsville

I took Austin and Griffin to Huntsville on Friday while Carson headed to be dropped off at Church Camp by Mom. We made the rounds at Big spring park. The boys were worried about the ducks crossing the road - so was I! After we were done freezing there, we headed to the Space and Rocket Center for some play time.











What?! We're building a Death Star?!