Summertime

I am completely blown away that it is July already. June seemed to last just over a week -- a week filled with birthdays, soccer and a quick family vacation. While the lovely Iowa heat and humidity will soon make me a fool -- I really hope the next 8 weeks or so slow down a little for crying out loud. I am not ready to start school shopping and all of that nonsense, I've barely had my toes in the pool!

For Independence Day tomorrow, we'll be attending the classic Norwalk parade on the front lawn of my Uncle Bob's house one last time since they are in the process of moving to Colfax. The parade will start off with my husband and Dad walking/riding with the American Legion, followed by every baseball team, church, marching band, firetruck and horse in town. It's such a long parade that it's amazing that there is anyone left to watch. Afterwards, we'll head down to the Faust acreage for the remainder of the weekend, hopefully roasting some marshmallows and seeing a few fireworks.

I just made a batch of chocolate chip cookies (taking some to the parade and some to the acreage) and one of my favorite summer pies. Thought I'd share the recipe since it's so easy and so yummy. It's from the Summer 2007 issue of Kraft Food and Family.

Lemonade Stand Pie

1/3 cup lemonade drink mix
1/2 cup cold water
2 cups vanilla ice cream, softened
1 - 8 oz. tub cool whip, thawed
graham cracker pie crust

If you are going to be ambitious and make your own pie crust, make sure that it's completely cool before you start making the pie.

Place drink mix a large bowl, add water and stir until mix is dissolved. Add ice cream. Beat with electric mixer on low until well blended. Gently fold in cool whip. (If it's really soupy it helps to put your bowl in the freezer for a few minutes.) Spoon into the crust and smooth out, mounding up in the middle if you can. Freeze at least 4 hours or overnight. Remove from freezer about 15 minutes before serving.

This morning I dropped Gretchen off at daycare and as usual, her little friend Cameron was waiting to play.

Gretch and I walked over to her cubby to take off her jacket and he followed us. Now, picture a little boy with big brown eyes holding a baby and bottle, leaning on a preschool-sized table.

Cameron says, "I was just thinking about when Gretchen is a cheerleader and I'm a football player."

Oh my.

Happy Birthday Katie!

By request the cake was devil's food with white frosting. Katie is a girl with taste! None of that blah white cake, white frosting that her Dad adores. I went a step further and made Martha Stewart's super fluffy cream cheese frosting with 1/4 teaspoon of pink food coloring and it was really good. We also grilled pork chops and twice-baked potatoes, steamed green beans and fresh lettuce from my Mom's garden.

Blowing out the candles in three breaths.

Opening presents. As usual, Katie received a lot of really nice things including a guitar, a baton and walkie-talkies. She already has all three in a pretty regular rotation.

Strumming away under the tree in the backyard. Happy Birthday Katie-bug!

June Flowers

Some pictures of the flowers in my yard. This first one is a Lavender plant Mom brought to me on Friday. It smells really great.

A very pink Hydrangea. The leaves don't look very hot and the entire plant is only six inches tall, but the flowers are beautiful.

A sweet smelling Peony in the front yard.

I can't remember what these are called, seems like maybe Coral Bells. They are really tiny, like the size of a tic tac, and they were blowing in the breeze. If they were real bells, they would have had a pretty tune.

Lilies.

Columbine.

Vinca.

These cupcakes are the same color as my sunburn. Well, not really. Not only is the picture a bit out of focus, it really doesn't do them justice. They are so extremely bright pink that nestled in the bright blue cupcake holder, if you look at them from above and squint just a little they look like an unfortunate sweater from the 1980s.

These beauties will be devoured by Katie's classmates tomorrow afternoon. The last day of school is Wednesday and her birthday is Friday so we're taking treats early. I really love that her school allows homemade treats, I would break my heart to have to spend a small fortune on bakery cupcakes when I can make two dozen of them in my very own kitchen for about $2.50. And, I just love food coloring paste, it gives you the brightest colors without adding any strange after-taste to the frosting.

Our weekend was good, but as usual it just flew by. Filled with grilling, sunshine, soccer and cupcake baking. The sunburn on my arms has faded quite a bit already and is not nearly as sore as it was last night. You'll be happy to know that I added a small tube of sunscreen to my purse today, now if I can just remember to apply...

4th Birthday

For Gretchen's birthday dinner we took the grandparents out to eat at our favorite pizza place in Norwalk and went to our house for cake and ice cream. Here are some pictures from the evening.


The birthday girl and her Incredible Hulk cake.

Gretchen insisted on chocolate chip cake so this is a yellow cake mix with about a cup of mini-chocolate chips added. The cake was pretty good but check out how thick the frosting is on the cake, it was a bit much.

Our girls.

Unbelievably, Gretchen will celebrate her 4th birthday on Saturday. She requested an Incredible Hulk cake and informed me that means a chocolate chip cake and green frosting.

Since there are no chocolate chip cake mixes, I added mini-chips to a yellow cake mix and about 1/2 a teaspoon of 'juniper' food coloring paste to get the frosting this green. It looks like Hershey's syrup but the writing is a tube of brown gel. I found a 5 inch Incredible Hulk figurine (action figure, I guess) for the middle and I'll add four candles tomorrow night at dinner with the grandparents.

There will be more pictures to come of the event, I just had to share the interesting cake choice.

Outta Sight Retro Night

Sunday night programming on WGN is Outta Sight Retro Night. They show episodes of I Dream of Jeannie and Bewitched or some other similarly-aged show back to back for hours on end. Our girls love the shows and have all sorts of fun comments -- is she really a witch? what is she wearing!? Makes for a fun night of family tv. The last time we watched it was The Munsters, which spurred the following questions -- what is wrong with his head? why is that one lady blond? -- in my opinion The Munsters are not nearly as entertaining as The Addams Family.

Lately, it's been Outta Sight Retro Night in my kitchen. I have suddenly had a lot more time to cook and complete other household duties, which means I actually cook and my kitchen floor is clean! Italian casserole, tuna casserole, lemon pepper chicken, cucumber sandwiches, vegetable pizza, yum-yum bars. It's not as if I haven't had any of these dishes since 1980, but growing up, most of them were staples at the King house so it just kind of takes me back.

By far the best part of this recent domesticity trend is the fact that the girls have eaten it all (well, I don't know anyone that doesn't like yum-yum bars) partly due to fact that when the face twisted up as I describe tuna casserole, I pointed out the jar of peanut butter and told them they are on their own.