Summer Slow Down

Summer seems to have slowed down a bit, which is nice.  I think the heat wave we had last week had something to do with it.  I had all of these big plans for the summer, and once again I haven't even gotten around to half of them.  We've kind of been home bodies and we've really enjoyed it.  Not that we don't go anywhere - just not many big outings and such.  I rarely even take the kids on errands, because four kids on errands?  Not so fun for anyone.  We tend to stick around the neighborhood, swimming at the pool and playing at the park.  The boys have lots of neighborhood friends to play with.  Yesterday we ventured out to Sonic for happy hour drinks, which is pretty much the most ambitious thing we've done in a while.  (Get the Coke Zero with vanilla and cherry.  Heaven.)

It's great.  Idyllic, really.

But it doesn't make for much blog fodder.  The kids haven't done much of interest or humor lately.

Well, Josh walked through the living room yesterday singing "It's Raining Men" at the top of his lungs.  And Cole has taken to calling Spencer "Spence", which is super, super cute.  Oh, and Tess has throw-your-body-on-the-floor tantrums over every little thing now, which isn't very cute but is fairly entertaining.


I took these pictures last Friday at breakfast.  You know it's hot and HUMID when the windows look like this at 7am.

Miserable.

My cherry tomatoes are taking off.  I made a caprese salad for myself the other day with tomatoes and basil from my garden.  I think I could like on this and never get tired of it.

Cole and Tess get really grouchy right around the time I need to make dinner.  The other day I let them play in the sink so they'd leave me alone.  (Tess's tray is full of water.)  It gave me a good 20 minutes of peace and only took about 5 minutes to clean up, so I consider that a success.

I pick from the garden about every other day now.  I should probably do it every day, but I'm lazy.  Big news: the cucumbers aren't bitter anymore!  Yay!  And there should be a good-sized crop of green beans in the next day or so!  Double yay!  I just watched a news story where all the farmers were talking about how produce isn't growing as well this summer because of the drought.  My garden seems to be doing pretty well, although I do think my beans have been suffering.

I have to hide the cherry tomatoes so the kids won't eat them all.  (I'm planning on using them for dinner tomorrow.)  I can't get them to eat grapes anymore, but they will eat the cherry tomatoes.  Smart kids.

That zucchini had been hiding and kinda snuck up on me.  It's humongous! I usually like them a bit smaller, but I'll find something to do with it.

So there you go.  We leave for Utah in a few weeks, so things are bound to get more interesting.  Until then, let's hope life keeps a slow and steady pace.