Green Thumb

Last year my dad went through the Master Gardener program in North Texas, and Patrick and I decided to start a little garden of our own. Thanks to a super hot summer the only thing that grew well was jalapenos, but we decided to take another swing at it in the milder fall that we have in central Texas. So, we planted a whole crop of tomatoes and one broccoli plant. The tomatoes flourished, but the broccoli was a little delayed. We decided not to pull it up, but left if through the winter. After all the rain and weather that we had, the broccoli grew into this huge plant, and today I was able to harvest our broccoli. I have to say that I am very proud of our little crop, and plan to plant this again in September.

Phoenix trip

A couple of weekends ago we went to visit the Micheau's in Phoenix, and we had a great time. The trip included Patrick getting stabbed by our niece (let me say that he was warned about this, but did not prepare for the wrath of Alyson: However, while the kids were at school the next day, the adults had a relaxing day hiking in the morning, going to Scottsdale to do a little shopping at H&M, and taking a little joy ride on Eric's kart. We decided that Chris definitely exceeded the kart's weight limit, as he was only able to go about 3 mph, until he hit downhill slope. Not only did he exceed the weight limit, he barely fit in the darn thing. (Disclaimer: If you are reading this, please do not tell Eric that we took his kart out for a little joy ride. We aren't sure how he would take the news) Nothing was broken, but Chris got his fix of trying out his son's new hobby.... That evening Chris cooked some fabulous ribs, and Kimmi and proceeded to finish off 2 bottles of wine followed by a sliver of chocolate cake that we were going to use for cake balls the next day. Not to worry, there was plenty of cake left for Kimmi's cake ball tutorial on Saturday.

Saturday morning we woke up to non other than rain in the desert. We waited for it to pass and took a drive into the mountains to look over Phoenix. We got a great Micheau family while we were up there, but the family picture did not last long because it starting raining once again. Who would have thought that we would have brought El Nino with us from Texas? After this beautiful drive we headed to this dive of a Mexican restaurant for margaritas and Mexican food. The drinks were going down smooth, so I talked Kimmi into a second margarita. Unfortunately half way through the second one, we realized that we shouldn't have ordered number 2. Being the child-less married adult, I got the great idea that we could dumb out the kiddo's lemonade in their kiddie cups, and use that to take out drinks with us. Little did I know that the waiter was watching me, and proceeded to tell Kimmi that we couldn't take our drinks with us. I acted like I didn't hear him, but Kimmi was mortified. So we gulped down the rest of our drinks while still in the restaurant. Not to worry folks, we weren't the ones driving... On the way back to the house, we got to see a little taste of what Alyson will be like as a teenager. I just couldn't help but take some video:

Eric wasn't being very photogenic on our trip, so I didn't get a great shot of him (except for the family picture above). But did get a snap shot of Patrick in Alyson's rock star glasses:

We had a really great time with the Micheau's and look forward to future visits in Phoenix.