Food, folks and fun

We cooked up the beans last night and it was fantastic. Boil snapped beans for 20 minutes, add the new potatoes and bacon then boil for another 20 minutes or so. Perfection.

I also made a cucumber/corn/tomato salad. It was so fresh and screamed summer.

We invited my husband's sister and her husband. We wined (iced tea) and dined. The kids were throwing the football around the yard while we visited as the sun was going down.

I have been craving corn on the cob and found it 5 for $1 this weekend. I'm pretty sure we haven't seen that price in a few years. It did not disappoint.

Grilled pork rounded out the meal as our protein. Dinner on the deck as the sun went down proved to be so much fun. Life gets so busy and we often forget to stop and enjoy the simpler things in life. It doesn't take much to make the every day feel special. Last night it was a colorful tablecloth and summer foods on the table on the deck. Love it.

Garden Update

We picked up some new potatoes at the farmer's market last week. The plan was to boil them this week with some green beans we canned last year as well as with some yummy bacon.

I was ecstatic when I went out to the garden this morning and found that the plants were ready for the first small picking. Fresh green beans tonight!!! 

Someone was having a hard time waiting for dinner. Can you blame him?

The garden has been doing really well despite the lack of sun we have had this year.

Can you see that little pickling cucumber? I could be pickling very, very soon. 

It appears we have a little stowaway. 

Is it my imagination or is that tomato turning orange? There is no better food to me than a plate of sliced, fresh garden tomatoes. I love summer!

Weeknight Entertainment

We have some options for entertainment around here. Our kids just by themselves make us laugh alot.

Whether playing the guitar or cards, there really is not a shortage of things to do.

How are those hands looking, girls???

Last week the kids decided they wanted to come up with something different to do.

Enter any loose items that could be moved to make an obstacle wall.

We have varying degrees of skill level in our family.

More effort was required from some family members.

Way to clear the hurdle, Ellie!



Man, that boy can jump and barefoot, too. He prefers it that way. I can safely say he did not get that ability from this mom.

Girls with guitars

She has wanted to play the guitar for a long time.

We had given her a child size guitar for her birthday several years back but she had long outgrown it.

Recently she had mentioned that she would really like a full size guitar to learn on. She thought maybe her younger brother could enjoy the small guitar.

So when we purchased a storage unit and found a nice guitar inside we knew we would be making one ten year old girl very happy. Steve replaced the strings, tuned it and away they went. Music to our ears.

Almost Wordless Wednesday - Summer Edition

 (Persuing personal interests.)

 (Making strawberry jam.)

(Summer library reading program.) 

(Summer sunset as seen from the backyard.)

CUHRAZY!!!

That would be a description of my life right now. We always look forward to summer but it doesn't mean less work, just different work. I like the change of scenery but we have filled our plates for this month. First we finished up school but I am still doing some correcting for olders who were working towards a specific goal. Next is the tent trailer clean-up we are working on so we can sell it. (Yay! New school books!) The garden is in and growing be it slow. The Pacific Northwest hasn't been so great for gardening the last few years. We are hopeful this year will be better than last.

We are now the proud owners of two bunnies for a certain ten year old girl. Thumper and Chubby are the names they came with and they need supplies and attention. So far, said ten year has been doing a fantastic job of taking care of most of this on her own. Her and daddy are building a double hutch as they are a boy and girl and well...let's just say we are happy with just two bunnies.

The biggest venture we are working on currently is that of storage auctions. Have you ever seen Storage Wars or Auction Hunters? They are two favorite shows around here and we are doing something similar. We purchased our first two units last week and are sorting through and selling contents. Not an easy task my friends but fun so far. The jury is still out on whether or not this is a worthwhile venture for us. We intend to go to one more auction, have a garage sale and see where the bottom line ends up before deciding to continue. I would like to say that it is not glamorous by any stretch of the imagination but Steve and I love auctions and we are enjoying doing something like this together. We make a pretty good bidding team.

My laptop, which has all of my pics on it, seems to have bit the dust. My tech guy is hoping to recover my info so I can post some pictures of our adventures again.

Off to scrub the trailer. Makes me tired just thinking about it.

New digs

We purchased a tent trailer almost three years ago. It sleeps ten and has served us really well. The fact that we are a family of seven means that finding hotels that will sleep all of us in one room is difficult. The two drawbacks to the tent trailer have been 1) no bathroom and 2) set-up has become difficult after Steve's shoulder injury and surgery.

We only used the trailer once last year and decided it was time to upgrade. The fold out bed feature worked for us but putting the roof up and down did not.

Enter the hybrid trailer. It also sleeps ten people but it has a bathroom AND the beds pop down instead of sliding out. Perfect!!!

Due to the size of the beds we will be able to still sleep all seven of us on the three pop-out beds and leave the table and sofa set up to use daily.

Each bed area has a curtain to close it off making nap times easier.

The fridge is bigger than the one we had in our tent trailer and the kitchen will be perfect for making camping meals.

We found this trailer used but it looks new. Also, being a hybrid means it is only 22 1/2 feet long for easy towing but 29 feet long when extended making for lots of room for all of us. Score!!!

We can't wait to take it out camping very soon. We also have a trip planned to Canada for a family reunion this summer. The comforts of home while seeing some of God's amazing handiwork on the road, how perfect is that? Also, we are fans of not having very much in the Blazer with us while we drive. Can. Not. Wait.

(We haven't moved, these pictures were taken before we purchased the trailer.)