Dinner, Friends and Fun

Sunday after we came back from Lincoln City, we had our good friends John, Amy, Connor and Kaiden over to our house for a BBQ. Amy brought a homemade pasta salad (with feta cheese and kalamata olives--YUM), watermelon and homemade french fries ala McMenamin's. Talk about good eats! We contributed the burgers and fixings, chips and grapes. It was nice to just sit on the back patio and relax in the warm weather. Luckily, we had a sprinkler nearby that everyone could cool off in between rounds of UNO. :)

After dinner, we all made our way up to the Cooper Mountain Nature Park (which is luckily and unbelievably close to both of our houses) for a short walk among the trees. It was dark when we left, but there was still time for a quick ice cream bar before bed. It was a wonderful end to a wonderful day spent with friends--and it reminded me that the best things in life don't cost anything more than gas and some groceries.

Lincoln City and the Sand Monster

Sunday was set to be sweltering in the city, and our friends Ken and Lindsey (and four-year-old Morgan) invited us to meet them at Lincoln City to play in the sand and surf. I was too excited to sleep and was up before 5 am. :) Michael wasn't quite as enthusiastic as I was; I'm sure he would have preferred to sleep in longer, but the beach was calling and his wife was ready to go! We stopped for gas and hit the road, taking "the back way" to Lincoln City, which to me means going through farm country through Newberg and McMinnville. It was a gorgeous drive with bright sunshine for most of the way. As we neared the coast, however, the sky turned white and the sun was nowhere to be found. While we waited for Lindsey, Ken and Morgan to meet us, Michael and I headed down to say hello to the ocean. It was downright cold and there was heavy fog to boot! It was quite a dramatic change from the sun and heat of the city. We bundled up in sweatshirts and I was wishing I had brought tennis shoes instead of my flip-flops as my feet were already getting cold and the day had hardly begun!

Happily, by the time Lindsey and Morgan arrived, it had begun to warm up and soon the exertion of building sand castles meant that I could shed my sweatshirt and stay comfortable. It remained foggy until we left around 3:30pm, but I liked it. I knew it had to be hot at home and I was happy to wade in the freezing ocean with Morgan. She and "Untle" Mikey (as she calls him), busily built sand castles (okay, Michael painstakingly built them), until the Sand Monster (aka Morgan) came and stomped them flat, then rolled on the place where they'd been for good measure. Untle Mikey's lower lip popped out to express his dismay, as Morgan giggled and danced around on the sand. I patted Michael on the back and said, "This is what it's like to have kids, honey." :)

Lindsey had the great idea of building a sand castle specifically for any Sand Monsters that might happen to show up and want to be stompers. Morgan called it a "Monster Castle" and that is what the four of us built. Then Morgan, Michael and I took great joy in destroying it with our feet. I laughed, saying that it sure took a lot less time to build than it did to stomp--about 3 seconds.

We played and played and laughed at the sheer joy on Morgan's face--it was hard not to feel like a four-year-old and I reveled in it. It was the first time in a long time that I skipped along the sand--and even galloped a little! Michael had a good time too. He was a willing playmate for Morgan and was game for anything she suggested. I love watching him with children; what an amazing father he will be.

After playing in the waves, looking for agates and skipping rocks until my feet turned red and Morgan began to shiver just the slightest bit, we packed up and headed to the local Subway for lunch. That veggie sandwich on flatbread tasted delicious and so did the potato chowder that Morgan shared with me. :)

After lunch we said goodbye and gave hugs and blew kisses, and headed home from our day at the beach. I for one, cannot wait to do it again.

Some Miscellaneous Fun Things

Over the past couple of weeks, I have had a lot of fun! I got 2 great birthday gifts that I have to show off . . . one is a lovely wind chime from my parents that has the most beautiful tones I have ever heard in a chime. There was some information on the chime tucked in the box that said it had been tuned to the Key of A. I never even thought for a moment that something like that could be done with wind chimes. The effect is very nice, let me tell you. I've been spending a lot of time sitting on the back porch in one of the Adirondack chairs and listening to the haphazard melody that the wind creates with the chime. Peaceful, very peaceful.

I also got some very beautiful flowers for my birthday from my brother and sister-in-law and their kids. They all came to our house last Sunday for hamburgers, a spirited water fight, and a trip to my favorite nursery, Farmington Gardens. Christy and Jessica (my sister-in-law and niece) helped me arrange the flowers in some pots that I had available. I really like how they turned out--especially the trailing flowers--beautiful!

A couple of weeks ago I decided to use (finally!) the very cool garden stone-making kit that my mom got for me last year. It came with its own little packet of cement, tint for the cement, some rectangular plastic molds for the stones and stamps for all the letters of the alphabet as well as numbers and punctuation marks--everything I could possibly need to make some unique and beautiful stones! It took me a little while to figure out what I wanted to say, but I settled on some French words . . . mon petit jardin. It translates to "my little garden." And fittingly, I do have a very little garden this year--just my pots of flowers and the yellow volunteer pansies that decided to make a home amid our path of stepping stones.

Lastly, last week I tried my hand at making some blueberry scones for the very first time. I got a smokin' hot deal on blueberries at Fred Meyer, and wanted to make sure they did not go to waste. The recipe I found on the Internet was a low-calorie, low-fat recipe and I thought, "Hey, why not try it? If they're terrible, I'll never make them again." Well, they were not terrible. They were fantastic! :) They looked like little chocolate chip cookies, and I figured since they were small, I could eat more of them than I would if they were the normal scone size. I thought they were best fresh from the oven, when the juice from the blueberries was still hot and the berries themselves kind of burst in my mouth. Yum. Michael thought they were great too, and within only a couple of days, we were out! I made a double-batch the next time and those were wonderful too. I have the recipe posted on Facebook, in case anyone is interested. :)

Hello Again!!!!

Well, I have decided to take up our blog again--and I just noticed that oddly enough, it is exactly a year today since my last post. How strange is that?! I am already addicted to Facebook (as many of you know!), but it's not really set up in a format that is conducive to blogging. Besides that, I can't seem to convince Michael to set up a Facebook page. So perhaps this blog will do a good job of keeping you all up-to-date with what is happening in both of our lives.

Yesterday, we went to my parents' house and Michael helped my dad build a trellis for their front yard. They have a wisteria plant that has been in a pot for over a year and has just been waiting for the perfect structure to be built for it to grow on. The trellis turned out really great! Michael enjoyed having a project (it keeps his mind off of being unemployed), and my dad basically gave him free rein to do most of the work. Dad's arm has been bothering him, and he didn't want to get up on the ladder, so he was the project supervisor. :)

My mom had to work until 2:30pm, so I contented myself with reading one of her books while the guys went to Lowe's and dug holes for the trellis posts. After she was done, we went thrift store shopping! Of course I walked away with a few more books for my collection, but their prices were so great (under $2.00 for trade-size paperbacks), that I couldn't resist. Then we sat in the sun in lawn chairs as Michael and Dad finished up.

Dad made beef stir-fry with rice for dinner (which was restaurant-quality delicious!) and we had fresh melon for dessert along with the last of the blueberry scones I made. Mom thought the scones were especially good with a dollop of whip cream on them. She was right! We sat around and talked until about 9pm, then finally headed for home.

As we pulled into our driveway, I spotted the NASA space station sailing silently (and extremely brightly) overhead. Mom and Dad had told us that it was supposed to be visible around 9:45pm, and let me tell you that we completely lucked out at seeing it since it was moving so quickly. As I watched it, I tried to imagine the people up there, so far away, and it boggled my mind. It really is amazing that we have the technology to send people into space and bring them safely home again. It makes me wonder if regular citizens will be traveling and even living in space in my lifetime. How scary and utterly exciting at the same time!