Officially Summertime

My class finally wound to an end, and my grades have been submitted. I need a few days of nothing to recover, but my booklist is long and the vacation days are too few. Each evening the boys try to stretch out the day even longer, resisting bedtime until their eyes are nearly drifting shut as they read "one more page" or play with "one more toy."

My mother came out to help the last two weeks. And it was helpful to know that JT and Tiny were enjoying her company and learning some of her tricks, even though I didn't get as much work done as I could have. I also wanted to visit and catch up and dream of a trip to Switzlerand again myself.

After we dropped her off at the airport, we headed over to an architectural salvage store, and the boys couldn't resist the lure of the diamonds. A few made it home to join the other treasures on their treasure shelf.

Before she left, we took her along to sample the delights of our favorite bakery. A loaf of chocolate bread made its way home and was soon reduced to crumbs.

On the fourth of July we joined some neighbors for a parade. If we had moved in two streets over we would have been part of the grand block party. Our street is boring, but boring can be good sometimes, too.

We finally picked up a new camera, after Tiny managed to break the old one at the zoo. (Oh, the pictures are still on that card.) It was nice to upgrade to a newer version of the point and shoot and try out the settings.

And of course there was cake. I wanted to make a fancy flag cake, but somehow fate was not in my corner. I didn't have 8 inch pans so the cake was pretty flat, and I didn't actually double the recipe either, so instead of making layers that would nest inside each other, I simply poured the colors into the same pan, creating a tye-dyed look. Nor could I find the cake recipe I wanted to replicate - it was beautiful and covered in an elegant layer of white frosting, so that the interior was the star of the party. Hmm. I also was too hesitant to submit our bodies to that much food coloring at once, so we stuck with a pastel cake. And then my frosting helper wanted to use blue. (Somehow I think the cake that I saw was NOT made with help of kids. I am always amazed at the gorgeous food that some mommy-bloggers make, but I can only imagine that they make these things after the kids are asleep or ban them from the kitchen - and what would be the point of that?)

Happy Summer!