2 Things

Well, since I am too lazy to do two separate posts, here are both combined into one. On we go.

4th of July: 
Our 4th was really great. It was fabulous to be able to spend all day together as a family. We started out by going to 7 Peaks first thing in the morning. We debated going to the parade, but decided that Hallie would be the only kid to like it, so we opted for swimming instead, which all three love. It was a good call as the park was much more empty than it has been all season. Every time we go, it has been crazy packed...we are talking wall to wall people. This time, we walked right onto all the slides, rotated between all the pools and attractions, and did everything we wanted within an hour and a half. It was perfect. We then came home, rushed through bathing everyone, and then started getting ready for a BBQ. We invited Devin's family over and two of his siblings were able to come plus his Dad.

Flor went down the big tube slide with daddy and came out laughing. I'll take that as a success!

This girl is a FISH. She is also a danger to herself. After our last visit to 7 peaks where she jumped off the tube by herself in the middle of the deep end of the wave pool (while waves were going) WITHOUT life jacket (and Devin was holding Flor and I was holding Jace, thus making it difficult for either of us to dive right in after her--- talk about scary), the new rule is that she MUST wear her life jacket AT.ALL.TIMES.

Also a fish. No fear here.

Part of the crew for the BBQ. We really enjoyed everyone's company. We had our BBQ at noon and then ended up hanging outside and chatting the afternoon away. It was perfect.

Uncle Shane kept telling Hallie that she really shouldn't eat the rind of her watermelon, but that sure didn't stop her. Ew.

Man I love this girl. She has an attitude and it's adorable (maybe not to her mom...)

This is the best we did for getting a picture of the family. 3/5 isn't too bad. The others were napping, I think.

Kayden and Jonathan

After everyone left, we felt much to lazy to cook, so we went out to dinner, then came home and put the kids to bed before enjoying strawberry pie that my cousin Sarah made and brought to us. Can I just say--- YUM. We attempted to watch the fireworks from the Stadium of Fire, but we had a pretty crappy view from our yard, so that didn't last too long. Oh, well. All in all, a very successful 4th, I'd say.

 

Item 2:

Should you be like Devin and I and end up doing at least half of your "date nights" at home... may I suggest that you do a "Chopped" date night? We did this last night and it was great fun. I saw the idea on another blog and thought it was perfect since everyone knows that Chopped is my favorite show. (For those of you who don't know what Chopped is, it's on the Food Network. It starts with 4 contestants and they are all given a basket of random ingredients that they must use to make an appetizer. The judges critique the work of the chefs and then chop one. The remaining three go on to make a main dish out of a basket of new random ingredients, then one is chopped, and the final two go on to make dessert before one more is chopped, leaving just one winner. Though there are four ingredients in the basket that MUST be used, the contestants can also use whatever else they want int their dish.)

Devin and I decided to just do one round and we each secretly picked two ingredients which we combined to make our basket. Here is what we ended up with: 

Strawberries, ice cream cones, string cheese, and swedish fish/hot tamales (I know that's technically five ingredients, but the candies were combined in one bag, so oh well)

We didn't plan it, but since we ended up with three sweet items, this basket was probably easier than it could have been. If you ask Devin, he will probably beg to differ. When we were done, he suggested that next time we at least try to coordinate the ingredients a bit. Apparently he doesn't watch Chopped all that much, eh?

Working hard on his dish

We set the timer for 20 minutes and off we went. Here are the finished products:

Devin's: A Strawberry/hot tamale/swedish fish milkshake with crushed ice cream cone for garnish, along with a string cheese grilled cheese sandwich.

Mine: Cheese stuffed strawberries (cooked in the oven), then rolled in a hot tamale/swedish fish/chocolate/marshmallow sauce (delish) and then dipped in crushed ice cream cone. Of couse extra sauce on the side.

Don't worry, I took this date very seriously. I even played the host. :) In addition to being contestants, we both had to play judge as well, which was quite great. We gave positive and negative critiques of each dish (Devin's: +Milkshake delicious, great flavors. - Grilled cheese sandwiches and milkshakes don't typically go together...needs to work on his theme a bit more. Mine: + Sauce for dipping =delicious and the cheese melted in the strawberry actually tasted pretty good (Dev was skeptical). - the ice cream cones were rather stale so the crust didn't taste all that great. Dumb ice cream cones...)

Who won??


Well, we called it a tie, of course. :) I definitely think we will be doing this again.