Happy anniversary to us! I cannot believe that tomorrow will have been 4 years since we said "I do." Time does fly when you're having fun, and we have lots of fun.

Only bad thing about getting married on a Saturday, its a long time before your anniversary falls on a weekend. We still find ways to celebrate. We met up for dinner tonight after I got off work and before Kevin's chess meetup (oh yes, we are both nerds) at a great Chinese & Vietnamese restaurant in Montrose.

We hadn't really talked about exchanging gifts, but Kevin surprised me with a card that is so perfectly us. My favorite line, "but what really matters in my world is that we are together, and however busy life may get, I don't forget that...ever" I don't know how you cite a greeting card (Kevin would probably know, but he's playing chess right now), but credit goes to Hallmark.

smart meter

more proof I'm a nerd....Kevin noticed we had a smart meter installed recently. Instead of the meter with dials its digital and can send our electricity usage to the electric company rather than have someone have to come read it and sends its CONTINUOUSLY.

Tonight on the news I heard a story about smart meters and watching the usage change as they turned different appliances on and off. They mentioned a website where you can make an account and look at your usage, so I made an account (you do need some info from your electric bill).

I can see our usage in 15 minute increments or on a daily basis back to when we got the smart meter, which is evidently the end of May.

I love a good graph and can easily see the highs and lows of our usage for the month of June. Its so recent that I know what was going on to explain the spikes.

the highest spike - the weekend my entire family was at our house

the low - the one day we had rain

If you have a smart meter and live in Texas, check out this site: https://www.smartmetertexas.com

Birthday Boy

Kevin had a great birthday!

As a treat I went and bought him some donuts for breakfast. We spent much of the morning getting ready for the party - a clean house and lots of food for everyone to enjoy. In addition to the meats he'd smoked (ribs and brisket) we had corn, beans, potato salad and a coleslaw that I'd enjoyed at his aunt's at Easter. We even found a little bit of Kansas City BBQ sauce that we were able to enjoy and have people taste. We'll need to make a trip back to KC so we can get some more...Haywards - its spicy and wonderful.

Everyone started arriving mid-afternoon, and we had a great time eating, visiting and playing Blongo ball. Blongo ball games were all pretty short - it is HOT out there.

One friend had odd guests with him - 3 turtles! They are his new pets and he'd picked them up from someone on our side of town on his way to the party. They were a hit with the kids, even the big kids like me -- the baby turtle was so cute. Luckily, we'd brought Smokey over to my in-laws in the morning since he's not good with crowds.

Kevin was able to wear his birthday shirt. His mom found it online, so true for my history buff.

For dessert we had chocolate cake and homemade peanut butter ice cream. The ice cream was fantastic, very smooth and very peanut buttery. Sonic ice (tiny pellets) is the way to go! We are definitely getting better at making ice cream.

The ice cream maker arrived last weekend, hooray! We made our first batch the same day it arrived - kept it simple and started with vanilla (with our good Mexican vanilla). We have some learning to do because it didn't freeze up too well and was kind of icy - but the taste was great, and it just means we have to practice. We think it was not enough ice, so we'll make smaller ice and really pack it in this time.

Last night we started up a batch of PEANUT BUTTER ice cream. We'll have to finish making it tonight since it needed to chill for 2-4 hours and I'm not one to be working in the kitchen at 1am if I can avoid it. I am so excited for this ice cream, I love PB -- I had to make a breakfast with PB today after smelling it for so long last night....

We plan to serve it with chocolate cake at the party for Kevin's birthday! PB + chocolate = heaven

I hope to have a full party re-cap soon. Kevin is smoking meat today and a bunch of our friends and family are coming over tomorrow. Wishing an early Happy birthday to my sweet Kevin!!!

ice cream maker

We ordered an ice cream maker back in mid April. We found the one place that said they had it in stock only to find out after we ordered that nope it was backordered from them too...back to the drawing board. We ordered it from trusty amazon (still back-ordered) but they now swear it has shipped. We'd been half joking that we'd have it by Kevin's birthday, but looks like we'll be lucky to get it by then. Note to self - order things everyone wants for the summer in the dead of winter before everyone else thinks about it

So, I decided to google ice cream maker recipes and realized that I am going to have to spend a LOT more time at the gym to work off all the frozen goodness I'll be eating.

just look at this - nutella gelato, I <3 you

and some of our blueberries may find their way into something like this

cannot wait....where are you ice cream maker??