I’m not sure exactly what this is going to turn into, but I know it’s going to be delicious. How can you go wrong roasting red onions, garlic, and garden fresh tomatoes, banana peppers, and serrano peppers? (The serrano peppers were from our friend’s garden.)
After roasting I decided to just grind it all up into a paste. I think maybe bruschetta or on pizza? It has a little kick to it!
And then I just sliced and froze some jalapenos because we can’t use all these before they go bad!
Since it was a nice day, Tom even came to the pool for the last day.
I went out to grab a few tomatoes and ended up with a shirt full!
When you show up at your friend’s house and realize that your wires got crossed so you have some time to waste so you make yourself comfortable in her house, take a selfie in the best natural lighting ever, and enjoy a view of the lake.
The last of our tomatoes are finally turning red. Fun fact: We didn’t plant these. They came up on their own from seeds dropped last year thanks to the chipmunks who were assholes and ate them off the vine.
So, some of you may have heard the long and involved tale of the table I asked for. If not, the short version is that neighbors had a similar style table that I fell in love with:
I thought it would be perfect for behind our couch for added seating, a place for the kids to eat snacks while watching TV, space for party hosting, etc. So I asked Tom to “throw one together” with the thought that it only needed to last until we moved because I didn’t want to move another big piece of furniture. That was March 27 (I know because that’s the date of the above picture).
Well, if you know Tom, he can’t simply “throw something together” when it comes to anything woodworking. 😂 So he started looking for plans, searching Pinterest, and watching YouTube videos. The time slipped by and weeks passed and I still didn’t have my table…but he was working on it! (To be fair, he doesn’t have a lot of time for projects like this so it was some weeknights and weekends only.) I kept giving him grief because I literally wanted a two-hour table and it was turning into a two-month table.
I did catch glimpses of it now and again and I knew it was going to be neat—he was using wood from various parts of my life, including wood strips from my mom’s basement and wood strips from a dresser my Grandma passed down to my dad and then to me (that finally broke apart during one of our moves)—he was cutting everything into pieces and then gluing them all together. I joked that this table was going to be a family heirloom that Katie‘s grandchildren would enjoy someday.
But it was seeming to take forever and I was growing anxious. After all, we’d already moved pieces around to make room for it—but it wasn’t there—so junk started filling the area and it looked bad.
And time passed. And since the table top had been stored in the garage and it was summer and humid, it warped…which necessitated more time to fix it. And then finally…it was done! Just in time for our back-to-school party on August 17 (or our anniversary on August 18—take your pick!). Tom was literally putting the last coats of sealant on it that morning…bu we were crazy busy so I didn’t even get any photos. That said, these were the legs (which had been painted gray). You’ll notice they are Hs. 🙂
We’d been casually looking for stools for months (we had two we could use but really wanted four) and by chance we found some on NextDoor and picked them up the morning after the party. We had measured the height to make sure they fit…but neither of us thought to ask about the width. I bet you can see where I’m going with this. Yep, two stools together were just a little bit too wide and didn’t fit underneath the table…DAMMIT!! The stools were really perfect and they were an amazing deal…so we ended up changing out the legs which gave us just enough room for the stools. Of course this took more time (but thankfully not too much more).
AND NOW IT’S DONE. AND IT’S PERFECT. AND GORGEOUS. AND I FREAKING LOVE IT.
Tom is simply amazing and I can’t wait to see this in our forever house (and Katie’s forever house 😂). And I can’t wait to see what treasures he builds when he actually gets a real workshop someday…
Tom really loves his smoker and he will try smoking just about anything, so today his assignment was fresh corn.
Olive oil, Chipotle lime seasoning, on the smoker for two hours, spritzed with water now and again since we didn’t have another extra two hours to soak the corn ahead of time. I finished mine off with another light sprinkling of the Chipotle lime seasoning. Mmmm. We’ll definitely do this again.
It really wasn’t even that warm but it was warm enough that the kids would go in the pool so off we went. I actually had to move into the sun because sitting in the shade was too chilly for me even wearing a light sweater.
We had so much fun last year we decided to do it again!!
The kids were very intrigued when Tom started using the blow torch on the ribs.
It took awhile but by the end of the night, some dads (and one mom—not me!) went down the slide. Which led us to wonder how on Earth these kids could do this non-stop… The adults got tired after just a few times. 😄
And then it was over…the cleanup aftermath. And we can’t wait until next year!!
I’m trying to decide whether to do a full tequila watermelon or just half for the party…? I’m thinking a whole…and any leftovers get turned into watermelon margaritas?!
(I ended up doing the whole thing.)
We thought the slide was going to be delivered Saturday morning…so the kids were thrilled that it came early!
We were getting some windows replaced today…
We looooove potato chips and are always up to try a new flavor. (I honestly don’t want to admit how much money we spend on chips. It’s utterly embarrassing.) So Tom saw these at Costco and sent me a pic to gauge my interest. You can see our exchange. 😂
Fast forward to tasting them. 😳😳 Yeah, we should have really gotten 23. Holy hell they’re good. It was SOOOOO hard to put them away after a small handful with dinner, but… accountability. If I didn’t physically put them away I could have easily eaten half the bag. Plus the kids actually like them, too.
That said, I’m not sure they beat my all-time favorites Ruffles Cheddar & Sour Cream and Lay’s Biscuits & Gravy, but they’re right up there.
What are some of your favorite chips? Bonus points if it’s something new to us that we can source locally and try!!
Today started rough but in the end, I think we all got on the same page.
So they knew that today they were going to have to continue and I was going to ask them again to make their bed and put everything left on the floor on their bed.
So I literally stood outside in the hallway between their two bedrooms to keep prodding them.
When I say put everything from the floor on the bed, I mean it. Don’t put anything away. Don’t play with anything. Don’t try to leave the room. Literally put every piece of everything from the floor onto the bed.
Okay, now… Katie, pull out all the Barbies. No not the clothes. No not the Legos. The Barbies. Not the garbage. No! Not the stuffed animals. The Barbies. Okay, now the clothes and just the clothes. No not the Legos. One thing at a time. One thing. Clothes.
Owen, you pick out socks and underwear. Just socks and underwear. No! Don’t put them away. Get all of them first. You dropped one, pick it up. I see more socks. Dig through everything on the bed.
Katie, are you done? Now do stuffed animals. Good. Now crayons and pencils. Put them in your art basket. No, don’t do Legos. Just pencils. Don’t touch anything else.
Owen, now do Pokémon cards. Move stuff around and find them all. No don’t set them there. Put. Them. Away. You have a Pokémon card box. Use it.
Katie! Just crayons and pencils. In the art box, not on your bedside table…
Left, right, left, right, left right. The ping pong match from hell. An hour later it was passable.
We were up there so long Maggie even joined us…and napped!
Their reward for keeping their rooms clean? The Amazon dots they’ve spied in my room. Their rooms get too messy? Unplugged and removed. Easy.
Wish us all luck.
Unfortunately it was back to normal life post-vacation so it was time for the kids to clean their rooms. So I told them they had to clean their rooms. Multiple times. They couldn’t concentrate for more than a few minutes before stopping to play or getting otherwise sidetracked. I started to lose my mind.
👩🏻 You guys have to clean your rooms.
👫 …
An hour later.
👩🏻 You guys have to clean your rooms and Katie remember you wanted to finish your library reading to earn the prize.
👫 …
An hour later.
👩🏻 You guys need to finish your rooms. Katie you have to read that book.
👫…
Katie: Can I have a snack?
Owen: Can we go to the pool?
Katie: Can I go to Sophia’s?
Owen: Can we have the dots in our rooms?
👩🏻: 😳🤯🤬 You do understand that I’ve been asking you to do the same thing all day right? And you haven’t done any of it yet?
Katie reads for 5 minutes and Owen reads for 10. They go back to playing.
👩🏻 Hey guys, take a quick sweep around and pick up everything that’s yours and put it away.
👫 (They pick up one or two things and go back to playing.)
Lather, rinse, repeat three times. I warn them that the garbage will be the next stop. This is NOT a new thing.
Guess all the shit I threw away? Shoes, notebooks with drawings, water balloons, Legos, stuffed animals, beads, figurines…
I’m currently waiting for hell to break out when they discover it.
We found some thimbleberries on the path by the house!
And a few blueberries that got missed earlier in the week.
Today I was a busy bee in the kitchen: roasted garlic Rosemary butter, pickled peppers, and pesto. The peppers have to sit for 24 hours but the butter and pesto were divine. I only got a pic of the butter.
I couldn’t get a good enough look. My best guess is they just kept getting new themed stickers and added them. Or they did their entire extended family? I really want to say the dad is military (I think I see a cover on one the figures) and there are three sets of 6. So a family of six? I queried on Facebook and a grandma gave me a good idea:
I think they are grandparents and it starts with them and their kids and their kids grown up with their own children….etc. That’s my theory now that I am in that grandmother kingdom.
I love a clean house. Love love love. It’s actually relaxing and lowers my stress level and makes everything in life just that much better…but unfortunately I don’t have the energy to do it, let alone the energy AND patience required to get the kids to do their fair share. (You’ve heard the expression herding cats, right? It’s legit.)
So we live with clutter and chaos and hope for a somewhat picked up house every few weeks when we have friends over. 😂
What state is your house normally in?
Katie’s birthday is obviously today and Owen’s was back in February, but both kids love a pool party so we decided to celebrate both birthdays together! (Owen also begged for another pool party!) So we had a 7th birthday and 10.5 birthday!!
The party officially started at 3:30 but we got to the park when it opened at noon so the kids could get in as much playing as possible (and to stake out the best shade seats, as is my usual). I didn’t take many pics because, well, I rarely take pics at the pool… And once people started arriving and the party started it was crazy busy—we had 15 adults and 27 kids!!!
But first, lunch. Of course the kids hadn’t eaten lunch before we left, so they were hungry pretty much as soon as we got there. We asked if we could have some of our party food early and that wasn’t a problem, so the kids had hot dogs and popcorn! (Our party package came with 20 cafe meals but we were bringing in pizza so technically didn’t need all the meals, so we snagged them for lunch! Brilliant!)
The arrival of the pizza!
Once we got it set up it was like a feeding frenzy. You’d think these kids hadn’t eaten in days. For a moment I wasn’t sure we’d bought enough pizza as the boxes were emptying at an alarming rate, but in the end it was perfect and we ended up with about 1.5 pizzas to take home.
Cupcake time came shortly after…
Of course we had way too many. I figured with 42 total guests, 60 would be just right because some kids would have two. But apparently most adults don’t eat cupcakes… So we literally had an entire tray left! I walked around handing out cupcakes to random people then took the rest to the manager’s office (they were happy to get them)!
We left just a little bit of garbage…
Sooo happy to see these guys together again!!
Tom and I went back to the water to cool off (it was still like 85°) and relax and two of our friends snapped pics of us. 😄
Katie was actually done before Owen so she went home with Daddy a little early.
All in all a great day… The weather was hot (I think it got to 94°) but it was perfect around the pool. Everyone had a great time. No one got hurt. Well, I take that back…Tom tweaked his back a bit but he powered through. And I lost my sunglasses on the waterslide—I had them tucked in my suit but they still came out…but they totally disappeared. They weren’t in the pool with me and we couldn’t see them in the pool anywhere. It’s a mystery.
We got a new bike rack that easily fits all four bikes! I even timed Tom to see how long it took to strap them all in and it was a mere seven minutes!
So Fun Mom™ made an appearance today at the water park: I went down the water slides with both my kids and got totally dunked each time! They thought it was the best thing ever—the whole way down on the double tube with Owen he was giggling like crazy, and upon retelling the story to Tom that night you could see him reliving the moments with a huge smile on his face.
And you know what? I had fun, too. I mean, who doesn’t want to feel like a kid again as your tube races down the slide (much faster than you remember as a child!) and you careen around the corners (OMG we’re coming way closer to the edge than I remember!) and and not one single thought of work or adulthood or chores enter your mind for those 17 seconds it takes to reach the bottom.
It’s amazing what can happen when you stop caring about what you look like or what the water will do to your hair or how you don’t want to get wet…and just think about making memories with your kids.
And here’s proof!! A friend caught us getting out of the pool!!
So proud of this girl!! I don’t even want to go down that slide!
I love laughing and having fun and doing crazy things (have you ever flown across the country to meet a bunch of internet strangers?). Right?!
And then I started reading this book: HAVE MORE FUN
It’s like I was meant to read this book. 😂
And now I know things need to change. If my life ended tomorrow would I regret the 300 unread emails? The clothes still in the dryer? The boxes still packed from our last move? Hell no. I’d regret not playing in the rain with my kids, not taking that cruise with the family, and not spending as much time with friends as we can before we move again.
Don’t get me wrong, the kids are still going to have to do their reading and workbook pages, but I’m going to make a concerted effort for us all to have more fun.
I love the pool but this is my idea of hell because I might be able to grab one of the very last seats in the shade. If I’m lucky. But on the positive side, I’ll have the alone time I need because the kids will be off playing.
It’s honestly normally not this bad mid-week but since this summer has been cold and rainy thus far, everyone is crazy to get out of the house! So I think every day that’s nice is going to be like this for awhile. Today’s crowds were like holiday weekends!!
We wanted to have a party but inviting the whole team seemed overwhelming so we just invited the coaches and team mom. And it was awesome! Everyone was able to come (minus one kid who had a sleepover already planned) and we all had a great time! The party didn’t break up until midnight!!
It’s not a margarita and I’m surviving! Go me!!
Tom making the other guys want a smoker and a flame thrower. Mark was even Instagramming it!! 😂
And of course, fireworks.
This might have happened late in the evening.
This is only part of what the kitchen looks like when making a triple batch of an amazing bourbon BBQ sauce. I despise bourbon but you can’t even taste it. We’ve already been through a double batch so figured might as well go bigger.
