We did manage to do a few "fun" things this week. On Wednesday we went to the pool with Jeni and her kids; on Friday, we repeated the pool visit with my friend Karin and her boys. I find that I enjoy the pool outings a lot more with other adults; typically, we sit in the shallow end (well, shallower end--it's pretty much all shallow when the deepest part of the pool is 18 inches) and chat, while we watch Andrew and whatever kids are close to his age climb the stairs, slide down the slide, splash in the water, and generally wear themselves out. And I'm getting to be a pro at the packing for the pool thing.
In between "fun" activities, we've been slowly but surely packing. Andrew has discovered in the plethora of boxes a new love for them: here he is in his box costume (he discovered seconds later that you can't really walk in boxes--I had to help him get up because he couldn't move once he'd fallen down).
Then he discovered a much more workable variation: his robot. He was particularly proud of this one--I love how you can tell he's smiling even though all you can see are his eyes.
On Saturday, we had a barbeque with some old friends from State College--Sam and Steph Sturgeon. It's pretty sad: they were some of our closest friends in State College (their daughter Gaby was Andrew's first friend and Steph used to watch Andrew for me on a regular basis), but we haven't seen them much in the two years we've been in Utah, despite the fact that they live a mere 45 minutes away. I've seen Steph a couple of times, but this was the first time we all got together. It was funny, too, how easily we slipped back into old comfortable friendship routines; at the same time, a little bizarre how much our respective lives have changed since then. (We both have two kids now; we both own homes; we're all done with our degrees, etc.). But we had a great time with them--unfortunately, this meant a later than usual bedtime for Andrew (worth it, I might add!), with its accompanying earlier-than-usual wake-up. Andrew was up at 4:30 this morning. We *think* he went to back to sleep after we (er, Dan--I was tending to Evelyn who was awakened by Andrew's cries) harried him back into bed, but judging by his behavior this afternoon, that wasn't entirely certain.
My mom took off (again) this week--this time for my cousin's wedding in Washington. (My poor mom has been gone as many weekends as she's been home--and I mean this in all seriousness; I think she's exhausted by all the travelling, most of it for business rather than pleasure). In her absence, I took over some of the gardening--meaning, I picked the bountiful raspberry and zucchini crop and tried to figure out what to do with all of the produce. I'm not a big berry fan (I know, I know), and my mom had charged me with making sure the cherries she'd bought got eaten. Faced with raspberries that weren't getting eaten (well, they were, but not quickly enough) and a bunch of cherries, I got on the computer and found a dessert recipe that combined both raspberries and cherries. Unfortunately, I got a little carried away. After all, I'm always up for chocolate. And if I don't really like raspberries, maybe raspberries with chocolate would do the trick? So I tossed a handful of chocolate chips into the mix. By all accounts (my own included), that was probably a mistake. The resulting crisp was okay, but a little strange. The cherries were a bit much, and the chocolate was even more so. Anyway, not something I'll be making again. But I was proud of my attempt to venture out of my comfort zone.Today's culinary adventure was a little better. While Dan made a yummy dinner of bacon and tomato pasta (minus the red pepper flakes for our conservative eaters), I used up some of the zucchini to make Paula Deen's chocolate chip zucchini bread. More chocolate, again, but this time I think it worked. At least, I like it. Dan's not so enamoured--but he says the bread tastes too much like zucchini and he only tolerates zucchini in dishes that hide the flavor.
At any rate, we're looking forward to eventually having a garden and trying out more new recipes with fresh produce! Since I will be cooking at least some of those, I can pretty much guarantee a few more disasters enroute, but hopefully we'll all survive anyway.
I'm not sure how much I'll be able to blog in the next couple of weeks as the packing intensifies and we actually move. (I know, we've been talking about it for so long . . . people at church keep coming up to me and asking: "When are you moving again?" As in, weren't you supposed to be gone by now?). But know that, even if the posts decrease in frequency, we will, eventually, be back . . .
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