Other Meals of Note

We've been spending a lot of time this fall eating crappy pizza and writing about it. It's exhausting work. I had no idea how much mediocre-to-truly-awful pizza could be had within mere miles of my home.

But consuming and documenting deeply meh pizza for your amusement isn't all we've been up to in the last few months!

Notable Meal 1

This year we successfully harvested a few red, ripe watermelons from our garden, much to the girls' delight. They were suitably thrilled.

Notable Meal 2

We are still searching for a restaurant that has truly earned the "honor" of our first zero-slice ("I would not eat this pizza at any price") rating, but meanwhile Ben successfully created a horrific set of english muffin pizzas a few weeks ago.

Here's his special recipe: Combine four soggy english muffins with a ton of sauce and a poorly chosen cheese (colby jack? really?). Heat to lukewarm. Attempt to consume.

The result? He successfully choked down two.

Notable Meal 3

As a belated anniversary dinner we headed up to the first (hopefully the first of many!) Bearclaw Supper Club at Sundance.

We figured we'd earn our dinner and so rather than taking Arrowhead lift up to Bearclaw we hiked ourselves on up. It was a perfect, beautiful afternoon with my very favorite person.

And just look at what awaited us at the top! This is definitely the best dinner-with-a-view that we've ever enjoyed!

Ok, fun over, time to get back to eating astoundingly awful pizza.

Sum Sum Summertime

Summer is here and we are soaking it all in! I keep thinking that we need to slow down... but then we keep having another opportunity to do something awesome and we just can't resist the bike ride, playground romp, picnic, concert, parade, and/or evening at a friend's house. And as tired as I am, I can't imagine us any other way.

So here's the Morningstar late-May and early-June Summer photo review!

Kites in the park - we only lost one kite's spars in the process (apparently they don't do well when run over by cars) and drew blood once (apparently Kevlar line is stronger than Steve's thumb skin) so overall a very successful day of flying!

May brought garden planting and the little onions and lettuces in this picture are now ready for first harvests

We're all loving homemade strawberry shortcakes made with berries from our garden!

We've explored a few new parks in the area and have deemed every playground superb.

The girls have been attending Sundance Kids Camp while Steve works and are having a blast. Morning yoga in the mountains is a great way for them to start their days!

The Hogle Zoo just opened a new African Savannah area so, of course, we've needed to visit the zoo several times.

And no zoo trip is complete without a carousel ride!

Ben and I have enjoyed several bike rides to the 7-Eleven. He convinced me to spring for the mustache straw - I think it was a wise purchase.

Strawberry Days Rodeo was a good time for all - the kids even managed to stay awake for the fireworks.

And the Cash Cow at the rodeo was sheer hilarity - watching a sea of hundreds of kids chasing 3 calves with money taped to them kept us all entertained. Those calves are faster than you'd think!

And, of course, we've attended several great concerts this year - Mavis Staples and Robert Cray Band and also Emmilou Harris. And the concert year has only begun!

As you can see, we've had a full and fun summer so far - and it's only late June! Combine all of this with camping, bike riding in 2 centuries and a 140 (woah!), and a new job and you have one very happy family. Shew, I'm tired just writing about all of this!

How does our garden grow?

Q: How does our garden grow? 
A: Very big, if we're talking about zucchini!

One of these years I'll learn to only plant one zucchini plant!  And for now I'll just enjoy shredding zucchini for future zucchini bread batches.  At least the girls think that coring and shredding zucchini is fun - it's always good to have cute grating buddies!

The Garden Produces

You know that summer is officially well underway when the garden starts producing its summer crops!  We are up to our ears in zucchini, but fortunately Steve has discovered some very tasty recipes involving zucchini stuffed with sausage that make the green part very palatable so between that and zucchini bread we're keeping up with the zucchini plant. Mostly.

We're still waiting on the tomatoes, peppers, blue potatoes, watermelon, eggplant, and cucumbers, but the carrots are almost big enough to harvest!  These were our test carrots and I think that in another week or so it'll be time for a carrot feast.  These girls will be ready whenever the carrots are!

Spring Springing!

It's finally getting warm and we are working hard in the yard and (mostly) enjoying it! 

This year Steve and his dad worked together to build some garden boxes and we're excited to try out container gardening.  We have 2 big boxes, one of which is completely devoted to strawberries and the other to various veggies (you can tell where our priorities lie!).  I've never seen our girls get tired of berries, but if these boxes really start producing we may even have some left over to freeze or jam!  But that will probably be wishful thinking - any berries within their reach are considered fair game for any and every snack.

 So far we've planted carrots (never had much success with these, so we'll see if they like boxes better than our regular garden), peppers, shallots, onions, a celery, a few garlic bulbs, and some spinach.  And the main garden has zucchini (only one plant!), cucumbers, and eggplant with potatoes and tomatoes to come.  Oh, and mint, don't forget the mint - summer mojito season is coming!

So far the girls are wonderful planting and gardening helpers, so we'll see how long their interest lasts.

And, of course, spring means testing out the sprinklers, means putting on bathing suits, means you might as well stay outside in your bathing suits and enjoy playing with the hose on the trampoline for the first time this year.  I guess that's a fair reward for a hard day's gardening!

Spring springs up... on me

I'll level with you - I was not looking forward to Spring.  I mean, if you were me, would you be looking forward to another upheaval in your life, regardless of it's predictable seasonality?  I thought not.

I finally had Winter kinda figured out - we went skiing, we read books, we had a routine - and for the past month Spring has been lurking, waiting to gobble up any peace I'd managed to establish with yardwork and longer days and new routines.  Admittedly, I've never before pictured Spring as a menacing force.

But my feelings had little (ok, zero) ability to hold back the tilt of the planet.  And fortunately God isn't done with me.

Through the amazing help of friends and my mom, bikes are ready for summer, the yard is just about spring-ready, the garden is tilled, and I've gotten to enjoy some good time digging around in the dirt and nurturing new life (mine, my kids', and maybe a few plants along the way).  And Spring and I are ok with each other.

We plant...

...we water...

...and we celebrate the first sprouting seeds!

And a big shout-out to Grammy, who worked her little hands to the bone and got us all ship-shape and ready for a new season!

Peaches are In!

Hooray! It's peach season again! Our little Asian peach tree in the back yard is loaded down with deliciousness and we've managed to save at least a few from the hungry birds that seem determined to take one peck out of every peach on the tree. Between the peaches and the tomatoes, I think the girls have managed to forage for most of their meals this week.

Sasha proudly displays her latest conquest.  When the branches are loaded down, the girls can reach the fruit themselves, so it's a fruit smorgasbord

Our peaches are Asian white peaches - they're smaller and sort of donut shaped with white flesh and they are so, so good!

Sigh.  Never a dull moment.

Chorney waits patiently beneath the tree for the girls to make a wrong move and drop a peach for her consumption.  No, I don't know why she doesn't just eat them straight off of the branches, but I'm grateful that she waits for them to hit the ground before snarfing them up!

Watch out, WanYing, Chorney's just waiting for you to lose your grip on that peach so she can gobble it up!

First Tomatoes of the Year

Morningstar tomato lovers unite - the first harvest of the season is in! Sasha, WanYing, and Daddy are in for a few happy happy weeks of BLTs and eating tomatoes straight off of the vine. Sam, Ben, and I will just gag quietly to ourselves.

Gawbewies!

Gawbewies! I wanna pick ga gawbewy! I wike ga gawbewies!As quickly as things change in todderland, Sasha's love for strawberries remains constant.

It's Just Not Right...

I know that with our love of snowsports and all things skiing we're supposed to be enthusiastic about this kind of weather, but isn't this a little extreme for May 24th?!? My Mother's Day flower baskets are not supposed to be snow-covered!On the up-side, however, Snowbird is now officially staying open through Father's Day!

Mother's Day Stepping Stones

For Mother's Day the kids got me an exceedingly thoughtful stepping stone kit and hanging flower baskets for the back yard. It was great - a gift we could enjoy making together and admire all summer long...

...still, and I know I should not admit this in a public forum, I was a little disappointed. You see, on several separate occasions, when questioned about the Mother's Day gift I would receive, Sasha promised that she had gotten me a tiger. A real live tiger of my very own! And she always punctuated the assertion with a, "ROAR!" for emphasis.

I mean, when you have your heart set on a 1/2 ton killer cat... it's hard to let go of those Mike Tyson/Siegfried and Roy dreams.

But I will seek contented- ness in my fabulous stepping stones and flowers, and perhaps Santa will bring me some sort of lethal pet for Christmas if I'm really good.