The Usual Catch-Up Post

I never mean to allow three weeks between my posts, but life just seems to go by at warp speed these days -- especially now that it is spring and blueberries are ready and we are getting ready for our season on the tomato farm.  Work has been taking up most of my time lately, and we won't even talk about how much of Brad's time it is taking up already.  You know it's bad when your child (Sanders) says to you "you know how you're always at work, and we are always with Kaitlyn (the babysitter)?"  Talk about a knife through a mommy's heart...and why don't they seem to notice that Daddy is always at work, even longer than Mommy?

Anyway, here's what's been going on, aside from work, since last we spoke.

Tyler got her braces on.  She already had the expander and some sort of contraption in the bottom, but now they have added brackets on her top permanent teeth.  She has been a real trooper through it all, and she has been great about brushing and flossing and all of the fun extra dental hygiene that comes along with a mouth full of metal.  And turning the key in her expander was really no big deal -- I was prepared for the worst, but she was a rock star as far as that went!  I am so proud of her.

I have cooked some good recipes that I wanted to share through some links...

These buffalo chicken rolls were awesome.  And easy.  Two words I love when describing a recipe.  

This Roasted Tomatoes with Shrimp and Feta makes my mouth water when I think about it.  It is easy, too, if you can get past peeling the shrimp.  I am the world's worst shrimp peeler, so it takes me forever.  I try to always have shrimp when Brad will be home to peel them, but I have done it twice for this recipe...it's that good that I will go through the effort! 

This pasta is an old standby, and I love, love, love it.  I could eat it once a week, I think.  

This past weekend I went to the wedding of one of my best guy friends from high school.  If you count the fact that our mothers went to lamaze classes together, I have known Justin since we were in utero, so he is really one of my oldest friends.  Justin married one of my brother's old girlfriends, so it was all of my old friends and Graham's old friends in one place.  It was great to see so many people from high school and to catch up on everyone's lives.  Most of us keep in touch pretty often, and we all know how Facebook makes the world so small, but I hadn't seen some of my friends since college!

Most of the weekend you could find the kids and me here...

We finally got to spend some time at the beach when it was actually warm (last time we went for the afternoon, it was freezing!) -- in fact, it was pretty perfect.  The kids are at an age where I can pretty much sit in a chair, look at a magazine, and relax.  (Of course, I keep my eyes on them, but I don't have to be quite as crazy about it as I was even last year; they just are growing up too fast.)

We also enjoyed our first watermelon of the year, but what do you know, I grabbed a seeded one from Brad's packing house.  But, at least the kids got to practice their seed-spitting skills.