SOLD!

The for sale sign can come out of the yard... Today I signed the papers for our first house!

These pictures are as much for Bobby as the rest of the world. He went out of town this weekend for work and left me to sign our life away!

(I know some of you are mad because you have yet to get the final word nor see photos, but alas, being homeless cuts down on the blogging time!) So here it is, a little picture of our house! I hope that better ones will be coming as well as some before and after photos!

Cars Cars Cars

For months I've been trying to find stuff to do to that Bobby will love. Often when I just want to spoil him I resort to Food and Movies, but I'm pretty sure cars are really the way to his heart. I finally found a local car show and got to take him on a date that was completely for Bobby.
I'm fairly certain that our future retirement will be invested in old cars.. He wants a Old beater truck, the polished refurbished one, the 4-wheeler, and of course classic Ford Model A to fit in with the rest of the Porter men clan.

zucchini baseball bat

Living with friends (and their garden) has given me the chance to experiment with zucchini. I love to play with recipes and try to figure out how to make them healthy and still have them taste good. I'm no expert at this- but sometimes I make a good combination and love that it is good for me too... (and sometimes at the grocery store bobby just wonders out loud about when he will get to have milk with fat, hamburger instead of ground turkey, and good ole' white flour-- don't feel too sorry for him, I love him so much I give him more than his share of ice cream!)

This Zucchini was one we pulled from the garden. I pretty much had to brace my back as I held it over the trash bag peeling it. IT WAS HUGE! I swear it was fatter that a baseball bat...

Here is the recipe I liked most out of my zucchini experiments ( this zucchini had enough in it for many experimental batches!) I read through the reviews that then tweaked it replacing most of the oil with applesauce, eggs with egg beaters, and then used oat bran instead of wheat germ (mostly because that is what I had) and used only wheat flour. It was really moist (but I did miss the crunchy crust of other breads a little bit) I guess I'll keep experimenting!

Vacancy

This is our first little apartment. As little and ghetto as it may have been, it was still very much home, and I'm more sad than I thought I would be to see it completely empty.

All our stuff is in storage and we are living with friends (amazing friends!) in Draper while the housing search adventure continues...

frightened

Some of you have endured the conversations with me where I expressed my distaste for something I like to call "yard art." I had no idea that "yard art" was actually an official term... but yesterday I saw a frightening display in the grocery parking lot. It was enough to actually freak me out... YIKES giant sculptured animals for the distinct purpose of yard decor. I drove around the lot to try to get a decent view and found the sign. Really?? they really advertise it as yard art? Wow....

scratch

The other day I sat at the table eating and found myself staring at a bag of brown sugar we had out of the table to return to our fabulous neighbors. I noticed a recipe of the back of the bag for brown sugar brownies. I was amazed at how simple the recipe looked. It was made from all of 5 ingredients. Good heavens you have to use 4 ingredients when you make the kind out of a box!!

That inspired me to make my first batch of brownies from scratch. I realize that this simple accomplishment if something many of you discovered long ago, but I was pretty proud of myself anyway.

When I first tested the batter (because you know I love the brownie batter) I didn't think it tasted chocolaty enough (in my extremely expert opinion....) so I doubled the 2 oz. unsweetened chocolate to 4.. When it was all done, the brownies were VERY rich and dark chocolaty, so Bobby didn't love them, but I was pretty pleased with myself for a first try.

Freedom

What a fabulous thing to celebrate!


We woke up early on the forth to enjoy the hot air balloons for the second year in a row. I get as excited as a little kid to see them. Tiffanie and Zak joined us this year and we rode our bikes over there at 6am to be there for the balloon launch. I'm pretty sure Tiffanie initially was thinking that there was no reason good enough to get up that early on a holiday, but it grew on her when she got to see a giant pig hot air balloon up close and personal.

The rest of the day was spent relaxing (sleeping) watching movies, swimming, and enjoying the company of good friends, good food, games and the one year anniversary of our $2 wiffle ball set while awaiting the fireworks.

During the fireworks our friend Emily started singing the words to America the Beautiful. I joined in and starting singing along. The meaning to this whole event really hit home. To just really think about those words... O beautiful for spacious skies... America! America! God shed his grace on thee