July 2nd was the halfway point of the year! How are we halfway through 2014...I know, time flies....and I rarely get on this blog to capture the moments. I cannot say that will change, but I'll try to do some recaps.
We had a pretty laid back 4th of July weekend. We spent it at home -- were thinking we'd have house showings (but didn't). We grilled some really good hot dogs (Nolan Ryan beef dogs - yum!), steamed sweet corn (Olathe corn - I love you), and finally got out the ice cream maker again to make our delicious peanut butter ice cream (hadn't made it in probably 2 years, and we've barely put a dent in it over a week later). The recipe is in the book that came with the ice cream maker and is DELICIOUS. Sonic ice makes great ice cream maker ice.
Not living in the city has the advantage that fireworks are legal (our HOA has regs against them but most people ignore them). We were able to just bring our chairs to our driveway and watch the fireworks -- it was hard to know which way to look there were so many!! The people in our neighborhood go all out on purchasing them, they really do look like professional ones -- a long way from the sparklers and roman candles I had as a kid. I loved the fireworks that day, could do without them days later when they were still freaking out Smokey -- we had to work with him to get him back in the yard he was so terrorized (he was getting into bad habits since he was too scared to go outside to poop).
The weekend was pretty rain, which we needed, so it was a good weekend to stay around the house -- and now that we are having showings again I really appreciate the uninterrupted time at home.
Yesterday we spent most of the day cleaning the house from top to bottom to get ready for an open house that is scheduled, and we had a showing as well -- hooray for one cleaning allowing the house to be clean for multiple audiences. Today we'll vacate the house for the open house to take place and it times out right that we'd be out of the house anyway to help celebrate our niece's birthday (the big FIVE). Because of the open house Smokey will come with us to the birthday party -- any guesses on how much food he manages to sneak away from the kids? (not IF but how much) We went gift shopping and picked out a Barbie friend and a Barbie outfit for the birthday girl. I had no idea there were so many Barbie items out there, just recently we gave some of my old stuff to our niece. One thing I still don't understand is "Skipper" -- she is still sold and I never understood why there was this other 'kid sister' as tall as Barbie but who was always odd one out, the clothes and shoes don't fit her......and the name, Skipper? oh well, maybe I'll never understand it.....
