Loose Lips Tyler strikes again!

Tyler told me that for my birthday, I would be helping him bake me a cake in the shape of a violin (don't ask me!?!) with pink frosting. He said that he would hide it in his closet because I would never find it there! Then he told me that I was getting 7 books!!! As much as I would love to think that I am really getting 7 books, I have to remember the source....lately Tyler has been telling tales that would make even Pinocchio proud! He is at that stage though, where he is completely unable to keep a secret. He even told Rick what he was getting for his birthday.

It's Tuesday today and usually we go do the Art in the Park, but I decided that this week we'd try a different park, so we'll go do the art thing tomorrow. Instead, we took took a trip to the library today and borrowed three new books to read at bedtime. At the library, they have a computer set up with games for the kids to use, so of course, that is usually how Tyler spends his time...on the computer.


It looks like the city is repaving the main street next to our house (I don't know why...it seemed perfectly fine to me) and they are now working on the section that intersects with the road we live on. So, they have a bunch of rock all over the road and traffic narrowed down to one lane. Grrr....it makes it hard to leave the house and go anywhere! There is only one way out, so it's not like we can take an alternate route to avoid the work zone...GRRR. Tyler and I plan on going out to the park tomorrow and then going to see WALL-E on Thursday.

Pool Time!

It actually wasn't that hot today, I just wanted to pull out Tyler's pool from the garage, clean it off and make sure it was good to go. I used Rick's air compressor to air up the pool...it was a lifesaver. Last year, we blew that thing up using our own hot air...and nearly fainted in the process. Anyway, the temperature today was in the high 80's, but it felt pretty hot after standing in the sun for a while. You know how kids are anyway, they'll jump into a pool of icy cold water without a hesitation!

This week, Rick will be working in Colorado...we'll go drop him off at the airport tomorrow. But when he comes back, we have big plans....we're going to go for a ride on Thomas the Train in Snoqualmie and then head to Seattle to catch the Go, Diego Go Live show! Jealous? Ooooh, we're excited!

Cherry Pickin'

Tis the season...it's U-pick cherries time at Barrett (the big red barn) Orchards here in Yakima. We weren't able to go last year and pick our own cherries and this years crop took a bit of a hit because of the earlier frost....but we still took a pretty good haul! Yummm...the cherries are so tasty, especially the Rainiers. We only picked Bing cherries, but we sampled some Rainiers and some chocolate covered cherries inside the barn. They have about 4 acres of cherry trees, but wouldn't you know it, we found the best trees, full of the ripest cherries right as we were getting ready to leave!! Our bucket was already too full!

Happy 4th of July!

I was surprised...the weather has been pretty hot around here lately, but today it was nice and cool...in the mid 80's. It actually rained a little bit this morning! We all dressed up in our red, white and blue and headed out to the carnival at the fairgrounds. We bought a handful of tickets and went on several rides. We went on one of those giant slides were you sit on a piece of carpet and slide on down. Tyler and I went on a small roller coaster...it was almost too much for me, one of the corners really jerked you around! Tyler also got his face painted, or I guess I should say his hand painted (he was afraid it would hurt to have paint on his face). I even saw some red, white and blue kettle corn that looked pretty tasty...hopefully they'll have some at the Farmer's Market on Sunday(we ran out of cash today).


Rick is outside now at the BBQ...we're having steak, beans, and corn on the cob. The fireworks start tonight at 10:00, so we'll head back over to the fairgrounds around then.

Yes, (blushing with pride) that's my basil!

Here is what we had for dinner last night, Avocado Basil Pasta....yum! The recipe is from Better Homes and Gardens Annual Recipes 2004 Cookbook. The recipe calls for basil, but I've never put it in before, because I've never had it on hand! I wanted to make the dish more hearty (since I was serving it as a main course) by adding a package of that Foster Farms precooked grilled chicken that I had in the fridge. The real bummer was that when I opened up the package, the chicken inside was kind of slimy and had white spots on it (gross), so I threw it out...I wasn't about to risk getting food poisining. It wasn't expired or anything, it just looked questionable. Anyway, back to the basil...the recipe calls for 2/3 cup basil, chopped. I picked the basil fresh from the garden, and it didn't even make a dent...I have a ton more to use!

The tale...er nightmare of the punture vine

I had never really heard of the puncture vine weed until we moved to this house and Rick identified them in the back yard. You know, the ones that grow in a vine-like manner close to the ground and produce nasty little "goatheads", or stickers as we like to call them. When we first moved into the house there were about 3 or 4 good sized puncture vine plants growing in the backyard that we pulled up, but they dropped off and left behind a ton of little goatheads. So as we walked around in the backyard we were always getting a million little stickers stuck in the bottom of our shoes that we then have to pull out...which was annoying....very annoying!! We finally thought we found the solution to our little goathead problem, we ended up burying them into the ground when we tilled the dirt a few weeks ago. Well, as it turns out, unbeknownst to me, the goathead is really a seed. So burying them in the dirt was not as brilliant a plan as we thought. Now we have hundreds of little puncture vine weedlings sprouting up all over the yard, because the tiller not only buried them, but spread them from one side of the yard to the other. I don't know whether to scream or cry....just this morning I pulled up 62 sprouts! Live and learn....right? Okay, I'm going to go cry now!

Kite Flying and Penny Pinching

It's Tuesday, so we went to the park this morning for the Art in the Park class. The craft today was meant more for older kids...it was a 3D kite made out of drinking straws and tissue paper. For the younger kids, they had diamond shaped pieces of contruction paper for the kids to color and add a ribbon tail to make a more simple kite. This was fine except that they used chalk to color the kite and as the kids were running around trying to get their kites to fly, the chalk was smearing all over them and their clothes. So after a few minutes, Tyler had a bunch of black and yellow chalk smeared over his forehead....it looked like someone had punched him in the head!

After going to the park, I dragged Tyler around with me to go shopping at a few stores. I bought some things at Macy's and the Craft Warehouse from the clearance section, but at the register, everything rang up full price. I had to battle at both places, just to get the advertised price. Then I took Tyler to Subway and ordered a kid's mini sub for $2.79 and a juice box for $1.19 and somehow my total came to $7.45.....What!?! Every place I went to today was trying to rip me off!