Eleven

This weekend, Mr. D. and I celebrated eleven years of marital bliss. We went away for the weekend to the exact same place we went for our 10th anniversary. We checked in on Friday and went to the movies. We saw Get Him to the Greek. We had dinner at a little pizza place. We walked around the little shops and even got caught in the rain. We had a cookie for dessert from the Great American Cookie Company. I love that place!

Saturday, we got up and hit the pool. I started my first book of the summer.
It is the first book that I have ever read where I personally know the author. I am only a few chapters in but so far I am loving it!! On a funny note, I bought Mr. D. a book by his favorite author Robert B. Parker. He wrote the Spenser books, which I am sure is the reason Mr. D. wants to name our little boy Spenser. Anyway, he said this book was a little odd and very different from his other books. Well, it turns out that I had bought Mr. D. a YA (Young Adult) novel. He said that explains why it was written so simplistically. He did report that even thought it was for Young Adults, it was still a good book.

OK, back to the anniversary trip. After the pool and hot tub we got dressed and went to Red Robin for lunch. After lunch we checked into the Westin Heavenly Spa for a few hours of relaxation and pampering. We enjoyed the infrared sauna, steam rooms, jacuzzi, and a couples massage. It was SO relaxing!! Once we got back to our room we both fell asleep and did not wake up until it was time for dinner. We went to dinner at a place called I Love Sushi. It was a fun night out. After dinner, we walked around the shops by our hotel. I had to pick up prizes for two little ladies I would be seeing the next day. I found great deals on cute stuff at Gymboree.

This morning we slept in and then went down for a breakfast at the hotel. After breakfast, we got packed and ready to leave. We left and headed to my Mom's house. Today was Decoration at the family's cemetery. These are the graves of my Dad, Granny and Pa. This is a "Southern Thing" from what I have figured out. Anyway, we meet every year, decorate the graves and have a family luncheon at my cousin's house. I guess you could say it's my family reunion. I have several cousins that this is the only time I see them every year. We had 24 people together for lunch today. It was a great time, but I must tell you that there were two little girls who completely stole the show! Yep!! Rylee.........


..... and Charlie!!
Cute and sweet, these sassy little cousins were so PRECIOUS!!!


Rylee, just 18 days shy of one year old was such a sweetie!! She is a tiptoe walker. The outfit was made my Aunt Patsy. There were little matching capri pants, but they got wet when Rylee was splashing in the pool.

Here is a picture of my Mom and Charlie.

Here is a picture of me, Kim and Rylee.

Here is Rylee and Charlie with Gran and Pop.

Charlie and Maggie

It was a fun afternoon. We traveled the rest of the way home and it was back to the grind here. I do have this bouquet to show off. Can you guess where I got these beauties?

From my Granny's blue snowball bush. I am trying to root one or two of the cuttings to make one for me that is from hers. I found a couple of different suggestions on the internet, so hopefully I will be successful. If I am not successful, I can keep trying with cuttings until the house is sold, or we decided to dig up the bush.

Speaking of success... I had two green cherry tomatoes that I had planned to pick if they were ripe when I got home. Well, an animal beat me to it. Whatever it was it ate the insides of the plant and left the peel behind. I have no more tomatoes on the vine, so I will have to wait a while for another chance. Hope you all had a great weekend too!!

great advice

Yesterday, I treated myself to a trip to Whole Foods. I LOVE Whole Foods!! It's like going to a food museum. I gathered a few specialty things that we can't get just anywhere, and the one splurge I made was on a new bar of soap for myself.
Their soap station is so cool and you just slice off what you would like to purchase. Awesome!! My soap is spearmint.
While everything at Whole Foods is amazing- one thing I purchased was above and beyond. It was their Roasted Corn and Vidalia Onion Salad. It looks just like Meredith's Tomato Corn Salad. This is actually what attracted me to buy it in the first place. I asked for a quarter pound. The lady who was preparing my order asked if I had had it before. I said no, and she said it makes an amazing sandwich- on pita with avocado and a spash of hot sauce. Tonight, I had just that- minus the hot sauce and it was AMAZING!! I swear I could eat it every day and never get tired of it. Of course, I would have to find a friend because I can't eat a whole avocado. Well, I mean I could but that's not healthy to do I am sure. Anyway, I am using the other half of the avocado for a homemade facial mask. I just couldn't let it go to waste.
Back to the salad- I looked on the label and the following is what it list for ingredients.
corn ( This was Roasted corn which I think added to the flavor!!)
Vidalia onions
green bell pepper
cherry tomatoes
avocados
jalapeno
garlic
white wine vinegar
olive oil
dijon
salt
black pepper
basil
parsley

If you have a Whole Foods in your area, I suggest you give this a try.

Memorial Day weekend and more

We had a great weekend at home for Memorial Day. It was nice to have an extra day off work. I think we worked harder than if we had actually gone in to do our jobs. We relaxed a lot too!! We got a new video game that we have been playing non stop. Confession #1 of this post: I am a gamer!! We are currently playing....Wii Super Mario Galaxy Two. It was an early anniversary present to each other. We have enjoyed playing it and look forward to spending our time together working to clear the game!

Please know, the weekend wasn't all fun and games. We worked A LOT too!! We work outside, and we worked inside. We did a lot of going through stuff that needs to be just cleaned out- like going though old files, going through the mail, cutting coupons, etc. On Sunday, the SPIKE TV channel showed all 6 episodes of Star Wars. Confession #2 of this post: I am a Star Wars Junkie. That really slowed production down on Sunday afternoon.

It rained off and on ALL weekend. We tried to do yard work in between the rain drops. I worked on the pond. Here is the before picture.
I am not totally finished with this area, but I did quite a bit of work. I stocked the pond with 20 new fish. I put in petunias around the pond and moved the mondo grass to a different place. Mr. D. trimmed the grass way back because it grows so quickly. I took the little gnome guy in to paint. Hopefully I can revive him because I really love him!! He is a little fishing gnome and I found him to be very amusing. Here is an after pic- but remember I am not done out there yet.
I think it will look very nice when the petunias start spilling down the walls. I will keep you all posted when I "finish". About 5 minutes after I got the petunias in it started to rain!!
Twenty minutes later, it was sunny again. I went back out to work on the front. This area was looking pretty wild! Another reason I was anxious to work out here was that Mr. D. bought me a hydrangea and I wanted to plant it while the ground was soft from the rain. My Granny always had blue hydrangea bushes. We called them the blue snowball bushes. I have been talking about getting one for a year now, and ta-da... here it is. Here is the after picture from this project. We have no idea what any of these plants are since the landscaping was in before we moved in. In the before picture you don't even see there is a bush of some sort behind all of those hedges. I think the hydrangea adds a nice splash of color. About 5 minutes later....
It started to rain again. I didn't even get all of my leaves picked up!!

After a nice hot shower, I went to work in the kitchen making our "big" meal for the holiday. I got to talk to this guy while I worked. Now for my next topic, I wish this blog had smell-0-vision so you could smell how wonderful these smelled!
I made a delicious mini peach cobbler. Mr. D. cook himself some wings on his smoker. We also had oven fried squash, corn on the cob and olive bread.
Two other home improvement projects to report and I am finished with this rather lengthy blog post. I added a bubble element to the tank.
And, I updated my baby frame in the kitchen. Rylee and Henry are going to be one before you know it!!

Minnesota LoveBugs

My niece and nephew went camping this weekend in their back yard. Here are some sweet pics they sent me!! I really miss these two!!!

Donovan
Kaleigh

the hats

Kate and I took a workshop on Friday with our coworkers on the Jr. Master Gardener program. One of the activities we had to do was to make hats out of embellishments, newspaper and tape. I of course saw this as a fabulous opportunity to add a little something to my already established collection.....

BUTTONS!!! I tried not to be greedy, but sometimes, I just can't help myself. Kate said in my sideways world (LOST reference) buttons are used as currency.
Anyway, her we are in our fabulous hats!! I can tell it's going to the be best summer I have had in a LONG time!!!

LOVE this!!!

We are not sure what kind of adoption is in the plans for us, but I just loved this posting and wanted to share it with you.
Mothers

lemonade -- attempt #1

As you know, one of my summer goals is to master the making of lemonade. It is something we both love, but I have never made any lemonade that made us say WOW! So, here is the story of attempt number one. For my first attempt, I decided to pull out the big guns- Paula Deen's recipe. It called for 2 cups of sugar (dissolved into one cup of hot water) 1 cup of fresh lemon juice and water to make the gallon. It sounded good- take out the cup of fresh lemon juice and replace it with seeped tea and you have my ice tea recipe. I made it. Mr. D. said it was more ade than lemon and I agreed. I tried to salvage it by adding another 3/4 cups (or all I had) of fresh lemon juice- but that didn't seem to help. Oh well, another week- another recipe. Stay tuned. I have an interesting one to try next week.