It's here....

Summer that is. The kids are officially out of school and I'm still in the honeymoon phase of enjoying not waking up at 6:30 in the morning. It's pure bliss. I got 9.5 hours of uninterrupted sleep last night (don't hate me). The kids are happy and playing well together (which they do at the beginning of summer). I know it will change soon. The "Mom we are soooo bored" will start soon. The 103 degree temperatures where we are forced inside is coming. But for now we are all very excited for the upcoming summer vacation. The weather has been beautiful so there has been a lot of trampoline jumping, running through sprinklers and yesterday they got to enjoy the Slip 'n Slide. We are going out today to sign up for the summer reading program at the local library which will keep us busy at least once a week in the morning. Swimming lessons will start soon and Wesley has his very first baseball game this Saturday.

I've been busy planting everything I can. The growing gene is strong in me, but not in the garden this year. The garden looks horrible. The plants are coming up just fine but I can't bring myself to go back there and mulch it. I will, but not today. Instead I've been planting tomato plants in containers on the deck, along with corn, garlic and lettuce. I planted a whole container of corn from some organic popping corn in the cupboard. It's looking great. Might be fun to harvest some popping corn, we'll see.

I also tried some lettuce and spinach in a bag of potting soil that's on the deck. It was inspired by something I saw on facebook. We'll see if it works, so far so good.

The strawberry bed is growing like crazy. A certain little girl goes out there every morning as soon as she wakes up to search for tasty strawberries. I put my basil seedlings out there amongst the strawberries since they did so well last year and I added some broccoli seedlings as well.

The kids have been asking for popsicles ever since it started getting hot outside and their favorite popsicles are the kind that you cut the top off and push up from the bottom. Those are also the kind that I think are not so healthy for kids. Full of Red Dye 40 (which makes my kids even crazier than normal) and high fructose corn syrup. So I found these nifty zip lock popsicle bags called Zipzicles. I can just pour in whatever I want and freeze it for the kids to eat this summer. The kids love them! We have tried just plain lemonade which was tasty and the second batch I pureed up a bunch of strawberries and made strawberry lemonade popsicles. I'm going to keep experimenting this summer and try all sorts of concoctions. The Zipzicle bags were purchased off of Amazon for $3 a bag which has 12 in them. I've been able to wash them out and reuse them twice now but I figure after this round I'll just toss them in the recycling bin. It should also be noted that you'll need a funnel to fill them. They take right at a half a cup of liquid each and it's best to freeze them standing up in a tall container (I used an old oatmeal container). Very cool idea!