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!

One H-O-T Weekend

We got a little bit of yard work done this weekend, despite the heat. Rick planted some extra shrubs around the tree in our front yard and started on the trenches in the backyard for the sprinkler pipes. Meanwhile, I was watering my garden like a crazy person, trying to keep my broccoli heads from bolting. Today I decided to chop off the two largest heads and Tyler and I will eat them with dinner tonight. My basil is really doing great, I've got two recipes planned this week that will use some of it up. I'm going to make a pesto sauce to go over some ravioli and then I've got a recipe for avocado basil pasta that is super yummy!

We also went to see Indiana Jones yesterday, but Rick and I are just a couple of dummies...we should have gone to see Wall-E. Now, I've taken Tyler to the movies a good 8 times, but it has always been during one of the toddler only matinees. The one time we took him to a regular showing, it was to see Horton Hears a Who, so it was full of kids anyway. Well, long story short...we had to walk out of the movie, so don't tell us how it ends! Compared to a group of children, Tyler is a pretty well behaved movie go-er, but compared to a group of adults, he doesn't make the cut. He made it about an hour into the movie and then got bored, I guess, and started fidgeting and talking. Once the older couple in front of us got up and moved, that was our cue...we had to leave. They don't have the toddler matinee program during the summer, so I guess we won't be going to the movies again until September:( We'll still go see Wall-E though, next week, when Rick is out of town.

Professor SillyPants at your service

Craft time again...Tyler and I put together these wacky scientist glasses that came in his monthly craft kit. They are made out of foam and as you can see, they are a little big, but apparently very tasty. I don't know why, but Tyler has been chewing on all kinds of strange things lately!

We're getting ready to brace ourselves for the hot weekend ahead. We have been enjoying 80 degree weather here, but this weekend it is supposed to get up to 100. I guess that will give us an excuse to stay indoors, maybe go to the movie theater...Indiana Jones, anyone?

You know it's time to turn off the TV when...

...Tyler can repeat or even beat a commercial to it's own slogan! It's funny, I was giving him a bath last night and while he was playing with his pirate toys, I heard him tell the pirate..."that's the power of Oxiclean"! He also has this phrase that he got from watching Dragon Tales, it goes like this...I just love ____ , it's so ____-y! He'll say stuff like, "I just love diesel gas, it's so...diesel-y" or my personal favorite..."Mommy, I just love your workout clothes, they're so... workout-y". Then there was the time that he told Rick, "Daddy, I'm tired of paying retail", after hearing that on a commercial for a furniture outlet store!