We went camping at our property with some friends this weekend. Some other friends came by on Saturday just to visit. We even had a visit from the mayor of the town. I friended the mayor on Facebook as someone I knew from way back in my days in the navy. It blows me away that he’s actually the mayor of a town…even a tiny town far beyond Bum Fuck, Egypt.
It was one of our first hot sunny days of the year so we spent a much of Saturday at the sand bar by the river watching the kids cake sand all over their sand monster selves. That night we were serenaded with illegal fireworks, which reminded Kurt and I of our old house in the hood. The sounds bounced and echoed off the mountains.
Lukas slept through all the noise but woke up cold in the wee hours of the morning. Adding blankets to him wasn’t working because he would just kick them up and they would wind up around his neck. He cried for an hour before Kurt decided he should just sleep with us. Then Lukas cried for about another hour before I took him and he instantly quieted down and fell asleep. Then I just couldn’t sleep. I had to pee, and Lukas was sound asleep. On. My. Arm. Damn kids. I pretty much just watched him sleep with his mouth open and head cocked to one side the rest of the night. How do babies not wake up with stiff necks?
We woke up to a rainy gloomy morning. I couldn’t tell when I friends woke up but by eight I knew I had heard voices from their pop-up camper so I went over and invited them into our mini cabin (it’s a shed on stilts). We shared breakfast foods and waited for the rain to let up.
When it was merely a grey day we all went outside so the kids could unleash their energy. We went for a walk while Kurt and Sophia stayed back to chain the ginormous picnic table the engineer over engineered to a concrete plug in the ground. I’m going to have to make the picnic table a whole other post, seriously.
Lunchtime arrived and so did another family of friends. They brought the rain back with them. We were overjoyed. Really. After lunch, which for Sophia consisted of a whole bag of tortilla chips, we went to the beach. At the end of the trail that leads to the river sand bar we call the beach the grey sky ended. No discernible wind that blew the clouds away, they were just gone. In place of the grey was sunshine and lollipops. Ok maybe it was chocolate cake sand castles.
Sophia actually playing with another child. I heard that she had started interacting with children at preschool, but this is one of the first times I actually witnessed interaction. They’re making “chocolate cake”. Sophia is obsessed with chocolate cake and birthdays. She kept singing happy birthday to me and Lukas.
The kids were watching Kurt turn their “chocolate cake” over and make it a sand castle. Shortly after the photos were taken Sophia decided to make sand angels and her partner in crime there followed her lead.
Last week I bought a box of parmesan and herb panko for the first time and I also purchased some thin cut chicken breasts for- Da Dada Daa! – breaded chicken. Kurt opened the pantry and saw all the panko I had…a huge unopened box of plain panko from Costco, a small opened box of plain panko from a store that sells things in non-Costco sizes, and the newly purchased herb panko. Even though the boxes were different, he didn’t notice that there were two flavors of panko. We had a long conversation about why there was so much panko populating the pantry. That night we ate Parmesan and herb panko breaded chicken. It was good and I didn’t have to add anything extra to flavor the chicken. All the flavor was in the panko and I didn’t have to work any harder to create it. It wasn’t super magical tasting but it was good.