California Road Trip, Day 2

Woke up early in our seedy hotel, washed up and headed into downtown Flagstaff for some wicked coffee (Emi and I got coconut lattes - yum!) and an everything bagel with egg, ham and cheese (called The Weatherford) at a cute little place called Late for the Train.

Coconut Bliss

California Road Trip, Day 1

We wanted to leave at 4am but we didn't get to bed until really late and ended up leaving closer  to 5am. We expected that the kids would file into the car and go back to sleep at such an early hour so we could power through 4 hours to Amarillo where we'd make the first stop for breakfast. No such luck. We made it almost an hour to El Reno where we stopped at McD's to get breakfast. When the drive-thru worker let us know the McCafe machine was "broken" we high-tailed it to the next McD's and got our breakfast and McCafes for the road. We promptly ate this meal in the parking lot of the Burger King next door. [Side note: It appears that BK had a nice breakfast menu but they were not busy at all. Wonder if they might need some better marketing?]

Sunrise in Oklahoma (wind farms on I-40)

We stopped for lunch at a Dairy Queen in New Mexico where we kept marveling at the clouds. Actually we marveled at the clouds the entire way. There was not much to see on the ground so the eye was drawn upward where there was much more interest.


The kids were good some of the time and fighting a good chunk of the time. It's amazing how quickly they go from best friends to throwing each other under the bus. Mostly they were happy...

Happy Camper

After lunch at DQ, the next interesting place we stopped was at the Continental Divide.





We decided to punt trying to see the Painted Desert/Petrified Forest in favor of getting to Flagstaff for the night, but we did wander off the I-40 trail just a bit to try to see some meteor crater. We thought we could just drive by but apparently you had to pay to go into the visitor center for an hour before the tour so we punted that and made tracks to Flagstaff.

We got to Flagstaff before nightfall and arrived to our skeevy hotel in time to order some awesome pizza and Caesar salad from Scott's Chicago Pizza.  It was at this point that I realized that I was missing my debit card and thought I must have left it at Natural Grocers but then I recalled booking the hotel after the NG trip, so I must have had it at home. I texted my nephew who texted me back a photo of my laptop with my debit card. Good kid!

Side note: Do not book your hotel at the last minute like I did. We did the same thing back in 2004 when Scott, Emi and I road-tripped to Chicago. At least we ended up with some really great Chicago deep dish pizza both times.

Luck Favors the Prepared

This post isn't about the subject line (or is it?); I just liked that line from The Incredibles.

I was rooting around in the garden taking photos of the progress and trying to remember where I found that tee-tiny watermelon on the 4th when I happened upon this guy:

This watermelon is about as big as my fist...

This watermelon is not the watermelon I found the other day so it appears that we have 4 watermelons growing along nicely now! All descendants from the wonderful organic watermelon we enjoyed last year.

The white Casper Pumpkins will be really cool this Halloween too:

Ghoulishly White....

My garden is a mess with the watermelon and pumpkin growing wildly out of control across rogue tomatoes and basil and strawberry plants (who are not producing). I still have a large flowering vine that is different enough from the casper pumpkin for me to still have hope that I have Kabocha.

Please be Kabocha. That would be tooooo cooool having 2 organic producing vines from my Natural Grocer purchases..

I guess we will have to wait and see...

My family did not love the squash when I served it originally, but if you recall, they didn't complain when I served it in a smoothie. Emi informed me today that if I seasoned it with cajun seasoning, she would eat it up. I will have to keep that in mind. I am envisioning Kabocha Squash soup and maybe some toasted seeds.

It's hard to imagine the Fall now that Summer is in full swing, but the stores are already advertising for Back to School! We haven't even taken our summer vacay yet, so please don't rush us...and garden, please keep chugging along so we can enjoy some of your delights this season (watermelon, figs) and some in the following season (pumpkin, squash).

Hope you are enjoying your sum-sum-summertime too!

Spiderman *

* pronounced the way Phoebe said it to Chandler.

Spidey's been hanging out in our back yard over the past week.... here he is scaling our sliding glass door...

almost...

Barely hanging in there...

As you can see, he worked up a thirst....

His secret identity is almost not a secret anymore...

Ten Ten

Yesterday we celebrated Emi's TENTH birthday! (I am still having trouble processing that.)

I have a 5th grader!!

I remember when she was just a little preschooler...

My baby girl when she was 3

Now she's into the double-digits and acting all teenagery...

Baby girl at 10

She opted for pie over cake this year so I picked up a Coconut Cream pie, a Chocolate Cream pie, a Millionaire Cream pie and an Apple pie from Pioneer Pies. Everybody loves pie, right?

Emi got pied:

Emi was left holding on tight to the pie

Aubri got pied:

Fear the Beard (the whipped cream beard)

And David got pied:

Somebody ensured that the pie got into his lovely curls that are growing back...

Later on we had some Nutella Gelato that we made earlier in the day (Giada calls it Chocolate-Hazelnut Gelato but we call it like it is!) It was di-vine!

This is all we have left now....it's all over but the crying...

It was an exhausting weekend for a couple of us with getting the yard in shape for the party (in 100+ degree weather) and then hosting a sleepover after the pool party. I was falling asleep in church and then later at my folks' house I snuggled up in a chair and succumbed to slumber....

Now, I am ready to slow things down a little for this short work week and am looking forward to taking it easy for the 4th...

How about you, any big plans for Independence Day?