Three day weekends and inspiration.

I haven't taken a day off just to take a day off in a while. Today has been wonderful. We slept in, lazed around, went for a bike ride... and I got inspired! It's so nice to have the time to experiment. Pinterest is so addicting and so inspiring. I've made at least ten of the things I found there - and I'm not a huge fan of cooking and I'm not super crafty.

Today I made these two things:

I finally found a use for this beautiful fabric I found in Uganda three years ago!

Homemade granola - delicious! I got the recipe from here, but I tweaked it just a bit. I didn't use hazelnuts or cherries, and used regular raisins instead.

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I'm trying to update more often, but it's been hard. The things I've had on my mind have mostly been  difficult things, and I don't often want to write about them. But this weekend has already been so good for me and I'm excited to see how the end of the summer and the fall go. We're looking forward to a New England road trip in October, time with visiting family, and hopefully lots more time with friends.

Thunderstorms.

I've never seen so much rain in my life. Downtown Denver flooded within 20 minutes and it was nearly impossible for me to make the 2 mile trek back to my apartment. Luckily, we seem to live in an area slightly more elevated than downtown, so there isn't as much flooding here.

I decided that flash floods, tornado sirens, and crazy thunderstorms call for about-to-go-bad homemade guacamole and tortilla chips. A new tradition is born!

Gardening.

This summer is not going quite as planned. I was planning a summer full of fun activities, field trips, and life lessons for a group of kids. Instead, I get to sit around with adorable babies and take a solitary child on field trips once every few weeks.

Last week was hard. One of the families that I had bonded with the most (and brought their children out of their shells and taught them to handle their emotions better) left the program suddenly. I miss my babies so much...

But... I'm making the best of it. We're growing a garden (it's actually growing!), and it's amazing. We ate green peppers today, a bowl full of lettuce yesterday, and it's been so amazing to see how well everything is doing. So worth it! Even when the kids pick green tomatoes off the vine, thinking they were green peppers. Oh, well.

Summer outside of work is wonderful. Hot, but wonderful. Yogurtland, poker nights (which means I sit outside and talk to people while David plays poker), walks in the rain, bike rides, pool parties... So good.