Yummy Recipes

I made this salad, Brown Rice Lentil Salad, last weekend and it was a HUGE hit. Great for the summertime!!

This ice cream topping, Sunshine Sundae Topping, is one I grew up with and always make. We love it!!

Hubby Recommends...

...this Book by Stephen Wood.

Summertime Gardens

One of the reasons my hubby and I love this time of year is all the pretty flowers and gardens we get to grow. My husband really wishes he had a farm to experiment and grow all the things he would like to. He did everything organic this year and is trying some new things. Now if only it would stay warm so things would produce fruit!! I finally got around to taking some pictures. My mom and Jason planted a beautiful front flower bed while I was in NYC....I was so surprised and it made the front of the house look so much better....it was just dead space before. And the flowers are just starting to bloom!!

The new sign we got at the Lavender Festival

Front of the house

The garden mom and Jason did....love the Hosta
love the trailing petunias

love the Martha Washington Geraniums

went with the red, white & blue theme again this year on the back porch

I need to harvest the herbs, dry and store them for the year!

Growing tomatoes upside down, supposed to help with disease

the big garden

Monster tomato plants

First HUGE zucchini

Corn

A trash can of potatoes...we will see how many we get

pumpkins

Should I be worried?

This is how Angel has decided to wear her socks this past week...on her hands...all the time. She will read books like this, clean things with them and spend hours taking them off and putting them back on....her hands!! Hoping this phase passes really soon...she wonders why she is complaining that her feet are cold!!

Update

Thank you for all the prayers being offered for my mother-in-law, Mary Hartsell. The two spots she had biopsied came back negative...good news!! So now she has a surgery date schedule for August 14th to remove more tissue and do the lymph node tests and remove any ones that test positive. We are hoping and praying that the lymph nodes are clean because then she would not need chemo. She will be staying overnight after the surgery and then have some recovery time ahead. Three weeks later she will start radiation treatment five times a week for 6 weeks. So...please keep the prayers going and we just wish we were closer to be there with you mom and keep you company and give you lots of hugs and kisses!!

Craicmore

Last Friday, Casey, Alli and Caitlin joined us down at the Boardwalk for the Craicmore Concert. They were really good and play contemporary traditional celtic music. It brought me back to the time I visited Scotland and Ireland!!

Trying New Things...

like zwieback toast and sippy cups!

Miss Potato Head

Trombanga Tuesday

Last night we went to Liberty Bay Park in Poulsbo to hear one of our favorite bands play, Trombanga. Angel loved being right by the water and we went for several walks onto the docks and looked at the boats. She got a free football and was actually throwing it quite well!! It caught very breezy and chilly towards the end of the night. Emma kept me warm and Angel decided to wear both of our coats. I took a little video of the music and people dancing. The elderly woman clapping her hands to the music reminds me so much of how my Mamasan used to love and enjoy things like this.

The Spit

Yesterday, after we left the Lavender farm, we went to check out the Dungeness Spit. It was a little hike down to it and then it was VERY WINDY. Angel wasn't too sure about the huge waves so she spent most of the time playing with rocks, in the sand and finding sticks...if she wasn't getting blown over by the wind. I found a log and zipped Emma up in my jacket to nurse her...it was so windy! One day we will have to make a whole day trip and hike the 6 miles out to the lighthouse and play in the water. Angel wanted to "march" the whole hike back to the car...so it took a little longer than expected. She marched while singing her Dinosaur Marching song by the Laurie Berkner Band. We were all tuckered out on the way home...wish we could have crashed like Angel did!!

Lavender Festival - Day 2

We started out first at the Street Fair at the Lavender Festival today. I did a little shopping and we had lunch...Angel loves the strawberry lemonades they have here. We also found some delicious lavender syrup to buy to make lavender drinks and coffees with back at home. Then we headed out to one more farm, the Olympic Lavender Farm. We saw lots more lavender, did some more cutting, had a lavender hot dog, and learned and saw the machine that makes the lavender into oils. It takes 10 pounds of lavender to make 1 oz of oil!! We had a really fun time and got some sun on our faces!! We are thinking of trying to stay in Sequim next year for the weekend instead of driving back and forth!!