Life Update

 Wow! Yesterday I realized that my last post was on May 20th. Where did the time go? Many times I had thought of sitting down and blogging, but then something came up and I just didn't do it (hmm...just like this morning). 

 Two weekends ago we traveled down to the Oregon Coast to stay two nights with my in-laws. We took our two nephews along and because we took them along, we were blessed to be able to drive our friend's 2010 Toyota Sequoia (my dream rig by the way). The boys are staggered in age with our girls and the 4 of them get along so well. The weather was great and if you know the Oregon Coast, you just never know about the weather. 

My MIL brought food for dinners and lunches. I brought lots of fruit and veggies with veggie dip and also stuff for s'mores. Whenever we are invited to go anywhere with anyone and food is involved, I always ask what I can bring to contribute, especially with teenagers, and that weekend we were bringing two more, and they were boys!! Yes we were invited but I never assume that the "inviter" will be providing for everything. When we invite people to join us on vacation I usually assign meals. That makes it so much easier.

We played on the beach, had beach fires and ate yummy marshmallows and smores, walked through town, played cards and enjoyed family.

The next Monday we went with Kat and some friends from church shooting. Kat has a desire to go into one of the criminal justice fields and these friends who are amazing people and very safety conscious offered to teach her to shoot. She and hubby did the shooting of guns and I did the shooting of pictures. She shot handguns and rifles. She loved it. I also shot pictures of the river that ran along the place we were shooting (which was out in the tullie bushes).

The rest of the week was spent getting things done around home and then enjoying lunch at the home of some friends. We ate the yummiest gyro sandwiches...I will be making these and posting about them in the coming weeks. I brought along dessert..my yummy peach/raspberry pie!

We stayed home over the Memorial Day weekend, attending a birthday party and just getting things done around home. Sunday we took Nan and one of her friends to a Portland Timbers soccer game. They had a blast. So did we. On Monday night we had a newlywed couple over. Homemade pizza was on the menu and originally we were going to grill the pizzas but my grill was on the blink. Sidenote on the grill....We bought our grill in 2003. In 2007 under warranty I was able to replace the burners, burner covers and grids for only the cost of shipping. Now 4 years later those same items need replacing. I was pretty sure that the warranty was up, but I called anyway. The customer service lady informed me that these items were still under warranty and could be replaced. Whoo hoo!!! These items would have cost me well over $300 to replace. But I didn't have them by Monday so we made our pizza in the oven. Still amazingly good.

I love homemade pizza and if you haven't tried it, you really need to. With this crust, it takes no time at all and is so much better for you! I used half white and half wheat flour. The following toppings were what we used in a variety of ways...

Sauces:

• Homemade BBQ sauce (and it was really garlicky)
• Homemade pizza sauce (tomato sauce with italian seasoning)
• Pesto sauce

Toppings:

• chicken
• tomato
• mushroom
• red pepper
• red onion
• olives
• pineapple
• spinach
• mozzarella
• goat cheese

We made two pizzas and just mixed it up with whatever toppings we felt like. Can I just say that goat cheese on pizza is really yummy!!!


We also had cucumber salad and fruit salad. Once again the load was shared between us...I provided the dough, chicken, mozzarella cheese and sliced tomato, as well as the sauces, and my friend brought other toppings along with the two salads.  We ate, talked, laughed and played a game of "Would You Rather"!

This week has been busy with both girls having soccer (Nan started last week, and Kat started HS kick arounds this week). Nan's soccer team is having a garage sale this weekend. Already, it's 7:30 at night and I started this at 8:30 this morning...does that tell you how my days usually go.

The girls are almost done with school. I'm so excited. I'm starting to think about next year, especially with Kat being in high school.

So life has been very full and I think that's why I haven't quite known what to post other than recipes...those are so easy. I'd like to get into a better routine of posting other things, but I do enjoy sharing recipes.  


With Joy UNquenchable,