zucchini

We've had a day or two of rain the in past few weeks. My garden had pretty much wilted in the August & September heat. I didn't think much of it until A sent me a text with a picture of a massive zucchini.


See it was massive. 4+ lbs of zucchini. I put it on the counter intending to do something with it. In the mean time, it rained again.




Then we got these two zucchinis. 7+ lbs of zucchini total.

Finally Sunday, I had to do something about them before they went to waste. Never before have I been so glad to own a cuisinart food processor. It made quick work of those huge squash.


I froze 6 bags of the shreds. After all that work, I had to make something right away. I also had some overripe bananas on the counter. I love google. After a quick search, I had a recipe.


An hour or so later, I had zucchini-banana bread. Yum!

A Free Sunday

Last Sunday (a week ago, not two days ago) we had a mostly free day, no plans until 4pm. We decided to take advantage of it.


We started with breakfast at Pete's. Despite it being hot, the kids all had hot chocolate.


Next we headed down to the DMA to the Hotel Texas exhibit.  We didn't know much about the exhibit except that it had something to do with the 50th anniversary of the JFK trip to Texas and the assassination.  It ended up being very interesting. It was the artwork that was hung in the hotel room where Kennedy stayed in Ft. Worth. They organized an exhibit of original artwork to display in the room, replacing the typical hotel art. All but three of the art pieces were exhibited again.


The Icebergs returned to the DMA! It had been out on loan for a year or so. It is my favorite painting in the museum collection and I missed it. I don't think the rest of the family was as excited as I was. You can see, J looking at his iTouch and A wandering and B is probably touching something he shouldn't.

A Dancing

I finally uploaded A's dance from last weekend. It is not the best video, the speaker is blocking her half the time.  I don't think they finished learning the dance either, it just sort of ends. DH was at the Alabama game and didn't get to see her, so here it is.

Soccer game

B had his first soccer game of the season a few weeks ago. It wasn't just any game, it was against Jerry Jones Jr's soccer team. The Y accommodates his team and schedules around the Jerry's Cowboys schedule. They had a game on a Monday night and needed a team to play against them. B's team filled in.

If you remember, B's very first soccer game was against this team.




B had a good first game and they handily won.

Alabama game

DH's birthday was 10 days ago. For his birthday, he found tickets to the A&M/Alabama game on StubHub. He called me up to tell me he bought his birthday present.

He flew down to Houston meet BIL#2 on Friday. They went to the Astros game on that night and headed to College Station Saturday morning.




He, BIL & BIL's boss had a good time tailgating and hanging out on Northgate. About an hour before the start, they headed into the stadium. When the first ticket scanned, the scanner said "STOP". The ticket guy sent them them to the ticket office. Sure enough, the tickets were counterfeit. It was not a happy situation. The ticket lady was very nice. She offered to sell them tickets at face value. What a stroke of luck. The tickets were better seats, in the shade and less than1/3 the price he paid for tickets on StubHub.


They were finally in the stadium ready to watch a good football game. After all they went through to get to the game, it would have been nice to have the comeback win. Almost.

On the way home to Dallas, DH called StubHub to figure out what they could do about the counterfeit tickets. StubHub was just as great as the Aggie Ticket Office. They immediately credited our credit card for the cost of the tickets he purchased. They also gave him a StubHub credit for the cost of the replacement tickets they purchased that day. Nice customer service, StubHub!

Renovation Update

They started the bathrooms a week and half ago. It took two days to tear out. There were a couple of days of seemingly not much happening. The electrician, the a/c guy and the plumber came to fix and move stuff. After one week, the hardiboard went up in the shower surrounds. They spent Thursday & Friday tiling in A's bath.

Boys' shower


A's shower


Tiling in A's shower


It should be another 2 days to tile the boys' shower. Floor tile is suppose to arrive on Tuesday. So far I like it and I'm happy with how things are progressing. Let's hope it stays that way.

Not a B post

Since J complained the blog was all about B, here's a post not about B.








J decided to join the cross country team. Today instead of practice they ran in the Oktoberfest 5k in Addison.  DH went and ran with him.  Cousin E is on the cross country team too. She ran to win the race. She almost did it. She got 1st in her division and was 5th female over all.



Last weekend A's dance company had a performance at the Main Street Festival in Irving. They performed a new dance. I'm still trying to get it to upload to youtube.

Cub Scouts

B's cub scout den is back in the swing of things. (I was selfishly hoping that he would drop scouts this year, just for my own schedule. He likes it and wanted to continue so we did.)

Over Labor Day, they had a camp-out weekend, or should I say lake-out weekend. One of the families invited the boys and a parent to come out for the weekend. We hemmed and hawed about whether we would go or not. Finally DH found out they had cable and brand new big screen tv. That was enough incentive for him.  Lake, boating and football.

They all had a good time. B went water skiing. The boys went on an adventure, taking the paddle boat way across the lake to an island. They swam, looked around the island and found dog prints. They thought it was pretty cool.












Last weekend they got together to earn their horseback riding belt loop. The leader's sister rides a lot and she hosted the event.

They had to watch the horse get saddles, brush the horses,  learn all the horse body parts. After all that they got to go for a ride. B also stuck his finger up the nose of a water buffalo. (I think that was a water buffalo!)






I think B got most excited about the 'worm' he found in a log. I like the spiders, huge brown and yellow garden spider and a blurry black widow.

J just said the blog is all about B now. I think he's correct, but I told him it was because he won't let me take pictures of him anymore. He at least agreed with me.

Bathroom renovations

We finished up the shower renovation in August. The bid from the contractor included renovating the children's bathrooms too. We told the contractor that we would prefer to delay starting the job until we knew that they would be able to do complete it in a timely manner. That delay ended today.

Boys' Bath Before 




After









A's bath
Before





After





We met with the stone guy after Labor Day to pick counters and tile for the shower surround. Once I got the samples home, I decided our existing floors weren't going to look good with the new counters. I went back to the tile store and found something for the floors.


Clockwise starting with the darker grey subway tile: Boys' shower surround, A's shower surround, counter and floor tile.

Hopefully it will all look good together.