Farewell, Cousin!

Dan, Amy, Elise and baby Lily are moving back out to California. Dan got a promotion, and while it's definitely a great thing for their family, it's also a super SAD thing!!! It was so great to have them living here for a couple of years. I'm going to miss having them near! They had a going away party at the park. Look how happy Dad is!



To try and ease the sadness, they offered a giant bowl of my favorite bread of all, Salaam's delicious fresh-baked loaves. I have to admit, it did make the pain just a little easier to bear.



Mmm, lots of delicious treats from Salaam.



Kate had her Strider out!



There she goes!



Heading back for more.



Watch out! INCOMING!



More! More!

Construction Cones

I just wanted to take a moment to showcase a local display of vandalism. I know that vandalism is bad, but these construction cones sure do make me happy every morning when I see them. There are so many of them! And such a wide variety! It makes me feel like I'm among friends while I'm driving along the highway.

Cooking Club

Summer hosted the August cooking club, and everyone just brought whatever they felt like! Valerie brought these little cherry tomatoes marinated in vodka for an appetizer. They were like little bite-sized bloody marys!



Summer made a round of ginger tamarind coolers.



Nancy made grilled corn and black bean salsa, as well as tomato salsa! So fresh and delish!



Summer made asian chicken nuggets. They are like fancy deluxe chicken nuggets!



Frying them up!



MMM. Served with spicy dipping sauce.



We took a break for awhile, to relax in the pool.



We decided to play a game of pooleyball, so of course I made sure to apply my Liquid Athlete, so I could bring my team to a victory!



After the game, we were hungry again! Valerie made these scrumptious grilled lemon garlic shrimp.



Emily made her own pasta!



YUM! Pasta time!






Cheers!



I made vegetarian tortilla soup.



For dessert, Yumi made panna cottas with apple cider gelée,



Soooooo good!



Another fantastic cooking club!

Summery Foods

Ben and I had a very summery food day today. For lunch, we made these killer turkey sandwiches with TONS of fresh, crunchy veggies! It's a veggie rainbow!



Then for dinner, our favorite. Grilled pizzas!



This time we did one with fresh heirloom tomatoes, goat cheese, and basil.



And another with pesto, shrimp, goat cheese, red pepper and red onion.



YUM! I love summertime!

Euchre Tournament

Summer and J hosted a Euchre Tournament tonight! This is the scoring system we came up with, possibly inspired by the World Cup? Random partners for each game. I would go into more details about the scoring, but I didn't really understand it 100% and just trusted the sportier people to keep track.



Lori and I were having a conversation about being forgetful, and then we started talking about movies. We talked about how we had seen Memento a long time ago, and how we'd both like to see it again. Then we realized that we'd probably forget about this conversation, so we wrote it down and took a picture of it. Kind of fitting, no?



SCOUT! And Dupree!



Megan added a little something to our note. Such little faith!



The hardcore super winners duking it out until the bitter end. I left before they were finished!

Happy Birthday, Cheryl!

We had a potluck tonight to celebrate Cheryl's birthday! Ben and Dad were on balloon patrol.



Mom made an amazing fresh tomato and basil pasta.



Vana made a tofu and rice salad!



I made an orange cardamom cake.



Dad and Ben geeked out for awhile on their iPhones.



I made some sweet potato black bean burritos, too. Kayla brought guacamole!



Time for cake!



Cheryl, you're supposed to make a wish, not pick your nose!



HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO CHERYL!

Citrusy Cooking Club

Nancy hosted cooking club this month, and the theme was citrus! She had also attended a cheese-making workshop recently, so we got to sample her homemade mozzarella. It was AWESOME! I was impressed!



Yumi made a citrus and spinach salad with spiced shrimp.



YUM!



Emily made a spicy Thai soup with lots of lime and lemongrass. Kicky!



I was planning to make grilled pizzas, but we could not get Nancy's gas tank open!! Three of us tried as hard as we could, with a multitude of serious tools, and could not get that sucker to open! (Where's Mr. Studlyhunk when you really need him?)



So I cooked the pizzas in the oven instead! Everyone was great in helping me with this quick change of plans. The pizzas ended up being super delicious this way, so it was a good thing. Lemon and piave pizza with red onion and rosemary:






The pizza, Nancy's salmon with grapefruit sauce and Valerie's citrus pesto pasta. What a great plate of food.



And for dessert, Summer's Seven Layer Lemon Cake! The poor cake fell over in her fridge. So instead it ended up being a Bowl of Cake. It just made it that much easier to put into my mouth! It was incredible.



We ended up the citrusy night with some delicious limoncello straight from Italy. YUM.