Caprese Grilled Chicken From Add A Pinch

Talk about a refreshing, fabulous summer dinner!

Click on over to Add A Pinch for this recipe.

Add it to your menu and go to the store now.

It's that good.

We had it with fried okra and fresh homemade lemonade.

  

pic from Add A Pinch

Some More Things I Love

I love...

 

having the windows open

flip flops

reading a good book outside

 this magazine:

fried okra in the summer

crepes

blogs and blogging

vampire, paranormal, romance and sci-fi novels

orange marmalade

pandora

sunflowers

iced chai lattes

kettle corn

vintage glassware

texting

lemon cake

tattoos

gardening

oatmeal creme pies

the movies: Dirty Dancing, Footloose, and Fried Green Tomatoes

the color yellow

quilts

and cake stands

Coffee Mug Swap

I'm participating in a coffee mug swap! 

Say what?! 

I know.
Fabulous right?!

Hop on over to He, Me, and Them to get in on the action!

 

Insta Friday Catch Up

Yo, Yo, Yo.

I have some catching up to do,
so I'll just throw everything into an Insta Friday post and call it good.

Word?

Word.


Starting with some fun Abby hair.
I love this girl's hair.
Even if fixing it usually results in some extreme measure of bribery.

We've been spending lots of time in the water with record breaking temps in these parts.

I'm not gonna lie, sometimes we just watch movies all afternoon and eat popcorn

...because come on 105 degrees!

The kids made some yummy super easy snacks one afternoon.

Just smash up a couple graham crackers in a baggie.

Mix 1/2 cup of creamy peanut butter, 1/2 cup powdered sugar, and 1 tablespoon of honey.  

We added raisins and dried cranberries, but chocolate chips or sunflower seeds would be fun too.

Roll into a ball.  Then coat in graham cracker crumbs.

We missed the lovely hail storm while we were on the family reunion, but it didn't miss

our roof, or fence, or trim, or garage door, or garden, or rose bushes.

Stupid hail storm.

Love me some Sonic drinks and chatting with the girls.

We enjoyed a day at the park with some of our buds.

I love summer picnics, on a quilt, under a tree, with good friends.

We toured a Gold Mine and Mill one weekend.

Let me just say, panning for gold is harder than you might think.

We had a water balloon fight with another good buddy one day.

What took me an hour to fill, took them less than one minute pop.

But that's what it's all about.

It was a fun minute.

I went to an amazing baby shower for a good friend.

It was like pinterest in real life.

 

I had the most relaxing Girls Weekend ever up in the mountains with some of my

most favorite people on this entire planet.

We really should do it..like every other weekend.

This little chunk continues to smile and laugh his days away.

We indulged in some fabulous 4th of July pancakes.

Who knew adding sprinkles in pancake batter could be so fun?!

I survived my first 5K.

We went to the 4th of July parade &

 partied it up with awesome neighbors until way past our bed time. 

 It was totally rad.

I actually made something that I pinned.

Thanks It's Been One Of Those Days for the tutorial!

The only thing I changed was that the neck of my t-shirt was too small 

to use to thread through my casing and tie...

so I just cut off the bottom hem of the t-shirt and sewed it together at the length I wanted it.

 

Have a spectacular weekend.

Go see Magic Mike.

It was haut.

Pray For Me

Because what the hell was I thinking?! 

I'm Back In The Game

What's up friends! 

The untimely death of my laptop forced me to take a bit of a blogging break, 

but I am back in the blogging game...

Thanks to our shiny new desktop. 

 (my precious)

And with my rededication to blogging, 

I found a fabulous manifesto for embracing the rest of summer... 

 Holla!

Thanks Lettered Cottage for such great words to live by.

 

I Didn't Die...

But my computer did...

after AJ quenched its thirst with an entire glass of water.

We were able to recover the hard drive, but the rest is toast, so

I am using Andy's PC (I just threw up in my mouth)

until we replace my beloved Mac.

Anyway here are my last two Insta Fridays crammed into a random late Wednesday night post.

The week before last week...right around my blog disappearance

we drove out to Kansas and Missouri for the good 'ol family reunion.

We racked up nearly 2,000 on the swagger wagon on this trip.

There was a lot of vampire novel reading, sleeping in uncomfortable positions,

and many hours of DVD watching.

I don't know how parents did road trips before portable DVD players.

I would have abandoned my children on the side of the road.

I'm just saying.

After about 10 hours on the first leg of the trip, we made it to Great Wolf Lodge in Kansas City to splash in the pool, go down many water slides, have a pizza party with Aunt Jess, Uncle JL, and V...

and have a much needed momma massage.

These are the only two pictures I have of GWL.

It was go time from sun up to sun down.

From KC we drove another 3.5 hours down to Missouri to spend the night with Grandpa Jim...

Where we played in bamboo growing in his yard, checked out his garden, and ate at my all- time favorite sub shop on the entire planet.

The following day we jumped back in the van for another hour to visit

one of the greatest people on Earth, my Aunt Glennie.

I love that woman.

We visited, ate ice cream, held her pet bird, and looked at old photographs. 

After visiting with Aunt Glennie, we loaded up for the drive to Branson,

our final destination for the reunion. 

We squeezed in a day at SDC before everyone arrived.

I love that my kiddos will have memories of riding Fire In The Hole and getting soaked on the water rides just like I did.  Good times. 

We rented two big cabins for everyone, signed up for meals, had awesome matching shirts, and lots of quality time hanging out with Grandpa Jim, aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters, and cousins.

One of the greatest things on Earth is seeing cousins run around and play like best friends.

We nearly filled an entire Duck Boat ourselves and quacked the whole ride.

We enjoyed a country dinner with Pepsi in mason jars, eating without silverware, and watching an incredible show.  Abby and AJ drink out of their Dixie Stampede boot cups for every meal now.

We caught lightning bugs, ate snow cones, went on a nature hike, made smores...

a sleep over on the screened in back porch with our cousins.

Then we drove 13 hours straight to get back to Denver in time to drop the kiddos off

with Nana and Papa and go to the Nickelback concert.

It was awesome.

We have got to go to more concerts.

After our late night, it was back to reality.

Lots of laundry and catching up on sleep.

Then I started working on my block of the month quilt again...finally.

I walked/jogged 23.25 miles last week.

There are so many beautiful trails out here.

I got some running shoes.

I had to run on a treadmill while they video taped me.

Not intimidating at all.

We spent a morning at the park and splashing in the water with good friends.

I discovered my new favorite ice cream flavor.

Black Raspberry Chocolate

Wow.

I finally made our Summer Bucket List

And we ended last week hanging out at the Museum of Nature and Science.

The fun never ends.