Doctors and Tomatoes

hey lovelies,
here I am, back on the computer, trying to write a post while my man is tuning his guitar next to me( yikes). This makes it really hard to focus. But I try to tune him and the kiddos( Pretend that you pretend to pretend.... yea that's how they play, CRAZYYY) out for a little while to let you know how our week is going.
Some things are crossed off this weeks bucket list, some definitely will get a rerun next week. My girlie is running high fever since Tuesday. How appropriate that we had our yearly check up scheduled for today! Tonsillitis is the nasty word and she is quite a trooper with it.
As for their stats: Stella is 6 years old, 54lbs(24,5kg) in weight and 50 1/4 inches ( 129 cm)tall. Yep, sister is tall and towering over everyone her age. We are not concerned since she seems to follow a pattern here.

Same with Mr Lu: His big head pattern continues, which means both kids are off the charts with something( I am really trying to think hard what magical food I was eating during both pregnancies that made them so, let me call it, unique ;))

Lu weighs 39lbs and is 39 inches tall which marks the 75 percentile for height and weight for a 3 year old. Both kids are doing great and are perfectly on track. Well except for the tonsillitis.
Since Stella was on meds and Daddys work is right across from the doctors office we paid him a short visit and quickly went to the farmers market to get some lovely tomatoes for dinner before we headed home.
It has been raining a lot this week, so we got a lot of reading done around here. we went to the library and came home with a big stash for everyone. I just got an email saying that the book I requested"What Alice forgot" by Liane Moriatry has arrived. Pretty excited about that. In the meantime I finally started reading" A Sweethaven Summer" by Courtney Walsh. I am on page 52 at the moment and loving it. Can't wait to get my hands back on it later on tonight.This book is special because I won it in a give-away from farmgirlpaints( sweet and talented Becky) and was sent to me from Courtney herself.

Cool stuff!!!.

Speaking of Becky;I am linking up with her today to share what I did to those lovely heirloom tomatoes:

 Roasted Summer Tomato Soup with grilled cheese

• preheat oven on 360*
• line a cookie sheet with aluminum foil
• wash tomatoes and cut them in wedges
• toss with olive oil and 1 Tbsp brown sugar
• spread on cookie sheet and salt and pepper them
• bake for an hour
• heat up some oil and add 1-2 Tbsp of minced garlic
• add the roasted tomatoes
• add a small can of chicken broth, a big can of tomato sauce, 2 Tbsp brown sugar, 1cup of Italian seasoned bread crumbs, 1/2 cup grated parmesan, salt and pepper
• let cook for about 15 to 20 minutes
• blend til smooth
• let hubby be part of the cooking experience and let him make the complementary grilled cheese sandwiches ;)     
•  

yum
My hutch painting project did not make much progress since last week, the purse is still a wild mess and the fathers day project, well Stella got a lot of painting and drawing done this week :) I would say enough to make Daddy happy for the next 10 or so Fathers Days.....
Happy Friday everyone!

A summer list

I might have mentioned it before here on the blog but I am seriously an addict when it comes to lists( Anything new here, you think!)

Here is the proof!

Most people love the summer time for it's easy go-with-the-flow, do what you heart desires-mentality. Me: not so much. I need structure, I crave it and I function so much better if I write things down and have them out of my scattered brain. But it's summer, so let's do it the fun way,mkay!
The past trips to the hardware and grocery store always included a quick stop in the paint isle to snatch up some cutie color samples. These things are so cool and free. Sometimes we use them in crafts but this time they will be decorating our living room all summer long.

Summer is long and there are a gazzillion of things that you could do and maybe want to do and when it comes to present a quick idea for a certian day you draw blank, like totally. Can anyone relate?
So one afternoon we sat down together and wrote down our favorite must do's for this summer on a master list. Good, but not good enough, the cuteness factor was missing big time.
So it was Stella's turn to prettyfy this project by using those cool color samples and writing our summer do's each on a swap! We hung them on a miniature clothes line and decide in the beginning of the week which ones we will tackle that very week.

Voila; cute summery and fun and it gives my Mami heart a little more peace over the next couple of months
we love it
Some are already accomplished, some were so much fun they did not leave the clothes line, they will get a second run.
There are so many fun things to do, you can find millions of lists on pinterest but this is what we came up with and what we think, suits our family best. Feel free to be inspired and enjoy your summer as much as we do!

• Library(always a winner and with great summer programs)
• Bike park
• visit Daddy at work
• Farmers market
• picnic
• Cherry pit contest
• bowling
• swimming lessons along with our normal swimming sessions
• paint project( see one of my next posts)
• make Ice cream
• bird watching
• have a sleepover
• a summer BBQ with friends
• take a trip( hopefully to Germany)
• visit the Zoo
• Read books under the oak tree
• go to the spray park
• have play dates
• go fishing
• camp in the back yard
• make a fairy garden
• go to the movies to watch Madagascar 3
• have a sleepover in Mami's and Daddy's bed
• make somebody happy with an random act of kindness
• go to cheer camp( Stella, even though Lucien wanted to go badly !)
• and there is room to add on to our colorful little list of happiness

Any suggestions???????
Just to proof that I am really a sucker for lists, I add my mini bucket list for this week to this post.
Last weeks got miraculously totally scratched out and I blame my blog for this. Once you make it public you kind of feel the need to actually stick with it;
So here we go:

• sand and paint the hutch
• find a new book to read
• farmers market
• check up appointment for both kiddos with the pediatrician
• clean out my purse and make copies of all the stuff I have accumulated in there
• run in the sprinkler with the kiddos
• work on our fathers day gift to Ricky( shhhhh, don't tell)

It is Summer!

well hello there,
and there it is is again, that feeling, the urge to write, to share, to sit down and let my thoughts go wild. It is time to plunge back into the waters of blogging.
Yes, I have missed it and honestly I don't really know why I stopped a little while back. And after a while of being absent, it is kind of hard to get going again, cause you really don't know where to start. So many things have happened within those two little months.... which will be eventually blogged about at some point. But for now I want to stay right here in the now!!!
We are enjoying summer, to say the least.
Remember a while back when I blogged about our naughty puppy Rosie, who ate and destroyed our pool liner?!

Well, for a while we were not sure what to do with that, nasty water was sitting in a detached broken liner hosting a five star hotel for frogs, snakes and most of all mosquitos. Disgusting!After crunching the numbers for a while, we opted to fork out the big lump of $$$$ and get a new liner and the pool done.
Ahhhhh, much better!

I am so glad we did, now. We are all loving it. The kids are so much more confident in the water this year. Miss Stella turns out to be quite a swim talent and is swimming like a fish.

If we have a day without errands to run or other things to do we try to be out there at least twice a day(early mornings and late afternoons) to escape the Louisiana heat, which is finally getting us nasty and sticky in 2.5 seconds. It's fun to have friends over and host little swim parties.

Mr Lu is able to touch the ground with his very tippytoes, my growing boy!

Finding all our swim gear scattered across the house and getting ready to go outside was becoming way too time consuming. So I came up with our Summer Pool bucket!

Big enough to hold all our beach towels, all the swimsuits we own, sunscreen, goggles,hats, cover-ups....and parked in my bathroom. I found the bucket at Target for 5.99$. I love it! The kids know where they find their stuff and we are ready to jump into the water in half the time.
The pool bucket and it's color inspired me to do some planning for  the poolhouse makeover. I decided a Aqua and Red color palette would look pretty good in there. This might or might not happen this summer, but hey, the colors are chosen and that's a good way to start.

My Mini Bucket list for this week sounds something like this:

• get an oil change for the van
• plant my new black knight bush
• get the summer pool bucket going
• Stella is going to Cheercamp
• Library
• finish my book first
• send tuition check( that's a hard one)
• Paint the kids table
• do some sewing with Cathy
• have a spit-the-cherry-pit-contest with the kiddos

Let's see what else is scratched off by the end of this week.
phew, here you have it, my first post after forever and it was actually not as hard as I thought...but I do not like the changes blogger made, not at all. This will take some getting used to
Off to eat some popsicles with my babies.... because it is SUMMER!!!!