Happy Monday!

We hope everybody had a fantastic weekend. As usual, it went by waaay too fast but it was great.

Saturday morning included a really good 6 mile run with Lula followed by her complete refusal to take a morning nap.  I am convinced that she was cutting her other bottom tooth and was in too much pain to fall asleep, poor thing.

Before we headed out to meet family for lunch, we did a little harvesting in the garden and brought her outside to distract her.  I ended up tying an ice cube inside of one of her baby washcloths and I think that helped sooth her little gums.  Isn’t she a dead ringer for the Cullen family?  Pale skin, reddish lips and eyes?

Because of Lula’s rough start the rest of Saturday was…how shall I say this…challenging. We were hopeful that minimal napping would mean an easy bedtime and thankfully, it worked in our favor.

Dinner was enjoyed with a blockbuster hit- The Stepfather.  Actually, it never even made it to theaters, only to our local library, but it was still pretty fun.  The tagline on the DVD case read simply: “Daddy’s Home.”  Awesome.

No run on Sunday so we all slept until 6:45 and with a restful night for all of us, Sunday was a wonderful day.

Pa received a table saw as a gift when he graduated from law school and one of his weekend treats is working in the garage on Sundays. He is currently making something for Lula’s birthday – he won’t tell me what it is. I’ve got three months to figure it out.

I recently harvested broccoli from the garden (I owe you an update) and grated the stalk for homemade slaw. Word of warning? This stuff stinks! I grated it early in the week and I swear I smelled it every time I opened the fridge- it was in two sealed plastic bags but still.  The point of this story? I used fresh grated broccoli for Mama Pea’s Thai veggie burgers and they turned out really well! They seemed to bind a little better than they do when I use store-bought slaw, perhaps because of the extra moisture from the fresh broccoli slaw.

Lately when Lula and I are in the kitchen, I use my Kindle to play Pandora’s Disney station.  I don’t know if she gets anything out of it but I love hearing songs from my childhood.That said, I don’t really see why Pandora thinks that Barney, The White Stripes, or Whitney Houston would qualify as Disney songs.

Yesterday afternoon it got really hot here- so it was time to venture out into the pool!  Something beat us to it though.

Lula can't even look she is so grossed out...

Do you see all the black specks in the pool?  Drowned gnats.  Since I’ve been slow to hire a pool boy, Pa came up with the genius idea to strain them out.I have a bunch of these old flour/cheese cloths that I don’t really use so one of these was perfect to skim the bugs off the top of the water!

Pa and Lula ventured in and they had a blast!  Lula tried, many times, to catch the water but with no success.We were out there around 6 PM and the color was so rich.  I love this photo of sun and shade.Our plans for the week include some shopping trips and hopefully a lunch date with our favorite guy.  We hope that you all have a fantastic week!

from the wildflower patch