summer is dragonflies in blueberry fields

Blueberry picking season has just begun here. We went picking on Wednesday with some friends and brought home a bucket full of beautiful berries. It was a lovely hot day and the bushes were covered with berries. They'd fall off the branches right into the buckets if you gently grabbed ahold of a bunch and slowly pull them off. The kids had fun chasing dragonflies and eating handful after handful of freshly picked berries. It was a fantastic outing!

My favorite childhood summertime dessert was blueberry crisp. Okay, lets not kid ourselves, here in Michigan we end up with freezers full of frozen berries from the summers harvest and we eat blueberry crisp in the winter too.

I couldn't resist letting today be blueberry crisp day. It's a simple dessert to whip up but SOOOO yummy. Abe and I enjoyed making this one together AND eating it together.

first harvest of the year and the most screwed up dessert bread ever

Yesterday we picked one gorgeous zucchini from our garden. Today we attempted to turn it into lemon zucchini bread. *Attempted*

My husband is manager over the produce department at his store. I called him at work and asked if he could please bring home one lemon so we could make the bread. I should have just taken the kids to the store before he even got home because, if you aren't already suspecting it he did not bring home a lemon. So, determined to stick to the plan we three ran to the store to get one lemon.

Get home. Start getting read to make bread... uh oh, no eggs. I was not going to run back to the store so Google search egg substitute and land on 1.5 tablespoons vegetable oil, 1.5 tablespoons water plus 1 tsp. baking soda per missing egg.

I debated but I'm the absolute queen of annoying my husband by altering recipes because either I am missing something or I think it sounds good a different way so I just went with the weird egg substitute thing. Abe had a great time zesting and juicing the lemon and he said it was a ton of fun grating the zucchini. At least that part was a win.

After the batter came together I realized it was going to be strange. I threw in a large handful of coconut (because I really like coconut and) to balance out some of the liquid. I had the thought in the back of my mind that it would have been wise to put the mixture in a sheet cake pan instead of a loaf pan. I should have stuck with my gut because the loaf came out WAY more like a lemon bar then a lemon bread or cake.

See all that sugar on top, WELL that's supposed to be a glaze. I had powdered sugar AND we kept back some of the lemon juice to mix with it and make the glaze. I made the glaze (totally according to the recipe) but I'm pretty sure my powdered sugar is way too old and has soaked up every flavor in the baking cupboard because the glaze tasted awful! Okay, lets be clear Abe loved it. He said it tastes... wait for it... just like Willow (the neighbor's dog). LOL

Me: WHAT?!?!?! It tastes like a dog?!?!?!
Him: Yeah, just like she smells but it's good, she smells good!

Me: Yeah, no it's official we are not putting dog frosting on the lemon zucchini weird.

So, I just topped it with plain sugar. The glaze had 1 cup of powdered sugar in it and I might have put a 1/4 cup of regular sugar on top instead so it's healthier now, right...

Wow. That poor zucchini, sacrificed it's short life for vegan lemon coconut olive oil zucchini weird bar bread cake. For the record, it does actually taste good but I think I need to hide it from my husband who has been napping during this entire ordeal. He will never let me live this one down.

Taking Inventory of 2019

2019 is half over, and some. I survived the long winter. We've had a really great family vacation to the Wisconsin Dells. My baby girl had her first birthday. Little Abe learned how to ride his bike without training wheels. Got the garden planted this year and it's doing pretty well. I'm back to my pre-baby girl pregnancy weight. I've seen my mom and sister almost weekly. I've kept in close touch with my best friend who lives an ocean and longer away. Somehow I've been staying on top of Abe's schooling which usually seems an impossible task. The kids and I have had a ton of fun outings. This year, as normal, has been flying by but if I stop to reflect it's been a good six months.

I think one thing that's lacking has been time with family. I haven't seen my dad but once, in March around Abe's birthday. I haven't seen my one remaining grandparent at all. I've hardly seen my brothers or their families. Life is always so crazy busy. I never get even half of my to-do list items done. Taking inventory on the first half of 2019 leaves me happy but realizing I need to make some more time for family. It's weird to think that my little feisty princess is already a year old and my own dad has only seen her three times that I can recall.

Life is exhausting, really, really, really exhausting but it is amazing too.

zucchinis are growing

The tomatoes are growing too.

Photo on the left is from one month ago.
Photo on the right is from today.

There's a zucchini plant that we grew from seed in the very front of the photo and another one back by Abe's foot. I squeezed three tomato plants in directly next to the fence. I sort of weave them into the fence and tie them to it with string so that I don't have to cage them. You can't see the tomato plants as well in the newer photo but they are doing good. They are the three little green spots in the first photo.

We haven't had any harvest yet but I'm really happy with how well the plants are doing.

Gardening has definitely become one of the major highlights of summertime for me.

Finally got the training wheels off of Abe's bike

We are so glad that summer finally showed up. June was really cold, following up cold January thru cold May. The heat that's finally arrived has been wonderful and we've been outside quite a bit.

Today was monumental as Abe is now riding a bicycle (no training wheels). Hooray!!!

We made a very short video highlighting the event, hehe

two new monarchs

On June five we brought two tiny white eggs in the house on two separate milkweed leaves.

On July three we let two gorgeous butterflies go into the wild (well, not so wild since we live in the city but it was so cool).

The new butterflies wings aren't able to fly when they first come out of the chrysalis.

This was the first butterfly to emerge.

This was the second butterfly and little sister was up from her nap when we let this one go.

Monarchs are so beautiful.

It jumped on his face when he was looking at it on his arm.

SOOOOOOOO fun!

butterfly day

Our caterpillar project now brings us to five chrysalises 

and just this morning two of them have become completely transparent. 

Today's the day!