tuesday ten

I promised my friend Chrissy I would do this, and she has a bun in the oven, so I will oblige her wishes. And I will also give her my bacon at any meal we eat together. If you are not willing to give your pregnant friends your bacon, well, I'm just not sure you know what real friendship is.

1. Fall is here. Finally. I was about done with shoving myself into a damp swimsuit. I was ready for summer to end. The very idea of greasing up another kid with sunscreen was giving me a tic. or is it tick? Don't believe me? Wait a few days and come back, there is a WHOLE post dedicated to sunscreen. Yep, exciting times on the blog folks...

2. I think pinterest is slowly killing my desire to make anything. Oh, there are great ideas, but there are just.so.many. Not to mention, do we really need to knit our own washing machine cozies?  Why can't we just be happy with chocolate chip cookies? Who really bedazzles their envelopes?

3. Breakfast for Dinner has become my go to-oops-I-forgot-to-thaw-the-chicken-AGAIN-dinner. I added in some turkey sausage, and these boys are happy campers.

4. Painting. If I ever tell you we have decided to paint our home again, and utter the phrase "We are just going to do it ourselves!" Tie me down, call a professional painter, and intervene. INTERVENE my friends.

5. Why am I so down on the painting? Our house is old, which = crooked = lots of patchwork=lots of sanding=lots of vacuuming =lots of time and by the time all that crap is done, you still have to prime, paint, switch colors because you didn't like the grey you picked, and then tape and do the trim.

6. Did you catch that part about the switching paint colors. Yeah, that happened. Poor Micah. You all should really add him to your prayer lists. He started rolling and got 1½ rooms done when I walked in and just said, "oh". He knew. He knew that he knew that he knew that I was never going to get over the blue-purple hue our grey had become. I am not a purple gal. Sorry.

7. Sometimes you have to just tell someone, "I don't know the answer here, I don't know why this is happening to you." I hate that. I want to say "Here, do this and this and this and the situation will be fixed!" But life, and people, are not like that all. Faith is not a fix-it-all. It's the willingness to keep the faith when something isn't fixed.

8. Did I mention I hate painting?

9. There was a cow in my backyard somewhere last night. I could hear it mooing for hours, but was too scared to go out and check. Oft times bad guys stand in fields mooing just to lure women outside, I'm sure I read that somewhere.

10. chicken. thaw the chicken. sorry, this last one was just a personal reminder.

Burger of the Week

In my last post I mentioned that one of our family's summer "things" was going to be a new/different burger each week. Some folks have asked if I would write down the burgers we made, so here they are... at least the ones I remembered to photograph before scarfing them down!

It started with this burger, that my friend Derek snapped a photo of when we were all cooking out together.

Traditional Cheeseburgers
I know, this isn't exactly exciting, but I didn't want to go too extreme right off the bat.

Next up: Bacon and Guacamole Burgers.
Oh.My.Word. These were easily our favorites, and I made them more than once!

And next... The Mushroom Swiss Burger.
 My least favorite. Micah and Emerson loved it.

We also tried: The Bleu Cheese Burger.
I wish I had mixed some of the bleu cheese in with the burgers, and even melted some a bit more to put on top. Live and learn I guess.

And if course, last week's: Onion Ring and Special Sauce Burgers.

Now we had a few others in there that I forgot to photo, or were repeats (like the bacon and guac ones!) or that we ate in a restaurant.  The boys loved this new tradition and I plan on doing it again next year too :)  My biggest lesson learned was that the best meat is the 80/20 beef. I NEVER normally but this kind, I get the extra lean that doesn't even need to be drained of oil when you brown it. I tried that in one of our first attempts... um... did you know that burgers need some fat? Those things were so dense it was like chewing a giant meatball. Yuck.  So, over the winter I will search for some new burger recipes to try next summer... YUM!