Memorial Day Weekend

As I type this, Memorial Day weekend is coming to a close…it’s 7 p.m. and the girls are getting bathed and showered and ready for bed. Overall, it’s been a pretty good weekend for us.

On Saturday Ed had to work, but the girls and I went to some garage sales and to the grocery store. Then my parents were kind enough to take all the girls to the beach in the afternoon and I painted white primer over the yucky pinky brown paint in the bathroom. But…I’ve already told that story.

Sunday was a good day – church (choir sang for the last time this season) and communion – lunch with family – music performances – watching nephew Elias’ baptism on video – hanging out outside – teaching Sarah to do laundry – watching “Castle” in the evening with Ed. You’d think with all the “unscheduled time” on Sundays I would eventually get around to reading at least one of the books stacked on my nightstand.

Let’s see…the bottom magazine is a Banner – I think I’m mostly done with that. The Vicki Courtney book next up is something that I should read – but I don’t HAVE to have those conversations with a daughter for another two years, so it’s easy to procrastinate on that one. I really want to read “The Shack” but have heard I shouldn’t read it when I’m home alone without Ed or when I won’t have time to finish it soon. “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle” I am about halfway through, but I think I mostly get the point of it by now. Eat healthy, local food. Right? Then there’s that weird one that my friend Beth loaned me. I read about half of it on the flight home from CA in April. It’s OK, but hard to follow because it’s all letters that the different characters have written to each other. Then of course the Bible. I do actually read that occasionally, but not often enough, I am sure. “The Love Dare” is from the movie “Fireproof” which we haven’t seen, but need to see, so I’m told. Then there’s two magazines, followed by two library books that friends recommended. I skimmed the “Free Your Child From Anxiety” book, and am relieved that I don’t have kids with an actual "anxiety disorder” – though one child may have a bit of OCD in her blood. Nothing serious. We joke about it. The top book I know nothing about, so can’t comment. Maybe I should read instead of blogging sometime.

Today was pretty relaxed. Ed & I went out this morning for a bit and left Sarah home to babysit. We’re going to try to do that occasionally in the summers – go out on Saturday mornings or something so that we can have some time alone and begin to teach Sarah how to deal with babysitting issues. We’ll never be far away – home in less than 10 minutes if she calls our cell phone – and will never be gone long. It’ll just build everyone’s confidence in this new phase of life. Then we cleaned the garage and did some other odd jobs around the house. That was all good. Ed got to play some video games and I got to work in the yard a bit. The girls played with a neighbor.

While I was working in the flower beds I noticed some cilantro ready to be harvested. I knew I had tomatoes in the fridge that needed to be used, some green onions, and a lime…it was time for the season’s first batch of my homemade salsa! Yummmmmmmyyyyyyy! The only thing missing was a pepper. I like serrano pepper in my salsa, but we used some jalepeno peppers from the jar in the fridge. It was good, but not quite the same flavor as a serrano. I like that smokier flavor. I whipped up the salsa and we had it with chips and burgers on the grill for dinner. What a perfect end to Memorial Day weekend!