Look who made it home from Hawaii on Wednesday night? And brought home a coconut thumb piano for Xander's birthday!
JP was driven home from the Boston airport by his friend's parents (who live in New Hampshire, so that was REALLY a nice deed) and has lots of photos and stories to share. I'll just post a few here, and hopefully get him to write about his adventures soon.
I have been obsessed with this lunch salad this summer. I make some protein pasta salad at the beginning of the week, and then add it to my normal garden salad (lettuce, onions, carrots, broccoli) and top with Creamy Italian dressing. Ugh it's so good. That bites of pasta feel like I'm indulging.
This is a whole family favorite meal - Honey Sesame Chicken. You just buy these packs of seasoning mix and follow the directions (except I cut the sugar in half because you really don't need that much!) and serve with rice and broccoli. That's about 6 pounds of chicken breast, 3 cups of rice and lots of broccoli...a few kids had already served themselves before I took this photo.
Declan and Brendan have been at separate camps this week. D has been at soccer camp and B has been at the YMCA camp where the counselors have been tiring them out, the sun has been tanning them up, and bedtimes can’t come soon enough each evening. One particularly hot day, we had to stop at our favorite ice cream shop to cool down:
A sweet customer dropped off this adorable rock that she painted for us:
Phil takes Sundays off from The Cottage, and we try and plan something fun for whatever family members are around. Last Sunday we went to the house of Maggie's friend, the other Maggie, who happens to live right on the ocean in Rhode Island. It was so beautiful! The kids paddled the floating dock out to their mooring and had lots of fun out there.
We had a cookout lunch and it felt so relaxing and perfect.
The day before, while the biggies were out on my brother's boat, I took Declan and Brendan to a trampoline park. Before you think I'm a fun mom, I was really doing it because I felt bad that there wasn't room on the boat for them and was trying to mitigate their disappointment. These little boys are daredevils and being a seasoned mom of six boys, I just let them run wild and free.
Afterwards we went to a new bakery in town to get some yummy cookies:
Finding this made me laugh...a smoking toilet. Brendan is so clever!
Have a happy Friday in August everybody! Hope your toilet doesn't start any bad habits :)
That jump park looks AMAZING. I've never been to one, but I know at least one of my kids would lose their mind with happiness if I took them to a place like that. Your food always looks amazing, Colleen. That salad made me hungry. I love salads with a little extra something. It really does make them taste so much more "decadent." And that toilet idea is genius. I might do that to my kids for April Fools?
ReplyDeleteThe funny thing was that I drove 35 minutes to get to this trampoline place and when I got there, the boys told me "it wasn't the good one". I guess there's one even BETTER in a different city that they have been to before. Please steal the toilet idea for April Fool's, we all thought it was so funny!
DeleteThe toilet prank is so clever. Love it. Maggie chose a good other Maggie to be friends with. We know lots of people with lake houses. Getting invited to them is always a blast. Looking forward to more info on the Hawaii trip. Especially sleeping in a car tent. Hoping that recipe is GF. Off to check it out. Looks great.
ReplyDeleteOoooh I think the recipe could be gf?? Fingers crossed! Friends with pools and boats and lake houses are some great friends to have :)
DeleteLooks like a lovely day off but then again, aby day spent on the water is lovely!
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