This is becoming a family favorite meal.  The kids love it because it’s fun and yummy.  And Tim and I love it because it’s cheap and easy (well, and yummy too).   I’ve always enjoyed making homemade pizzas but I find the crust to be a bit of a struggle for me.  Either I’m too impatient to let it rise properly, or I find it’s too plain tasting, or too mushy in the middle… I seem to have trouble with it.  So, making the pizza on the bread eliminates all of those troubles.  And one giant loaf of bread is only 99 cents at Walmart.  Ye-haw!

I’ve only used half of this loaf pictured!

For any of those of you wanting to give it a try (it’s ridiculously easy) this is what we do:  slice the french bread in half and then in half lengthwise (so you end up with four long open face pieces of bread).  Slather some pasta sauce on, sprinkle with motz cheese and top with pepperoni.  Bake between 400-425*  for roughly 15 min.  or until nice and bubbly toasted.  Done!  See, it’s so easy.  And so yummy.

Nope, you’re not reading that wrong.  I know Chloe’s birthday isn’t until September.  Auntie Jen takes the kids on a special outing for their birthday and this year she decided to combine all three cousins (Kailynn, Allison and Chloe) and take them to a water park in the Wisconsin Dells for an overnight!  As to be expected, Chloe is BEYOND excited about the trip.  She asked if she could pack her bag over a week ago.  I made her wait until yesterday.

I love these adventures and the memories that she’s making.   I’m sure she’ll come home filled to the brim with happiness and stories to share.

Off they go!  (Photo courtesy of Jen)

We are in full swing of summer mode.   Eating ice cream cones, running through the sprinkler, reading Harry Potter, trips to the library, planning birthday parties and watching family movies after supper.

I have found that I have two speeds in life: 1. busy/productive OR  2. relaxed/lazy.

The school year requires me to be fully in my first speed.  I have limited time in my day to get a lot of stuff done before I start teaching.  And, for the most part, I genuinely enjoy being busy and productive.  It’s satisfying.

But after marrying Tim, he has also taught me how to slow down and relax.  A skill I was lacking when we got married.  Completely.

I had no idea how to relax.  I know it sounds strange, but it’s true.

So we are enjoying our slower pace of life right now.  If things take longer than we expected, it’s no big deal.  If we drive somewhere and it’s closed, no big deal.  If Chloe’s piano lesson goes on for an hour, no big deal.  If we decide to eat ice cream for supper, no big deal.  If we can’t get to the swimming suits on a hot day b/c Maddie’s sleeping, just run through the sprinkler in your clothes.  If I want to ignore all of my responsibilities because I want just want to read, it’s ok.   🙂

Ah…. summer is great.

The kids enjoyed taking their annual teacher thank-you card pictures again this spring.  It’s adorable how excited they get about getting their very own photo shoot.  They get to pick places all over the yard to pose and hold their sign.  Maddie was a little difficult this year… but she’s at that age. (Plus, it was really cold the day we took hers! We took these back at the beginning of May.)  Overall, I think they turned out pretty cute!

Every recital I wish I had more students pushing to memorize their songs.  I don’t require the students to memorize the song, but I do think it’s a useful thing to have a song at your fingertips.  It’s also good to really work your brain “muscles” as well.  So, even though I don’t require it, I do encourage it.  This year I decided to try out a little incentive to those who wanted an extra push.

Enter the Memorization Star wall!

If the song was memorized they got to fill out their name on a star and put it wherever they wanted on the wall.  It actually worked surprisingly well for the first attempt.  I definitely had a few students eyeing the wall to figure out who had made it and came the next week eager to show me their song.  I think it will be a fun to bring back the Memorization star every recital!

(As a side note, Josiah didn’t quite have his memorized by the recital, but he worked on it really hard the next day until he had it memorized–and came running to tell me he was ready to add his star.  If you look really closely at the picture, you’ll notice he has been able to add his star on the bottom right side.  I just didn’t have the heart to tell him no. 🙂  )

Kylene and Justin flew up for a wedding last weekend and we had the delight of getting them for a visit for a few days.  The kids had been eagerly counting down the days until their visit with great anticipation.  We picked them up from the airport on Thursday afternoon and did a little shopping (Target and Costco!) and then made supper and enjoyed catching up.  I honestly can’t remember much about that evening anymore… it’s a blur.

On Friday they decided to take the big kids on a special adventure:  rock climbing.  The kids had never been to an indoor rock climbing wall before, but they have both taken a vested interest in climbing trees so it seemed like a good fit.  In fact, after we had discussed it for a little bit on Thursday evening, Josiah suddenly came in crying with scrapes on his arms and legs… he fell out of the tree.  We were a little concerned that he might not be interested in going climbing anymore after getting hurt, but he bounced right back without hesitation.  And let me tell you, they had SUCH a good time.

See that tiny person near the top?  Yup, that’s Chloe!

Here are a few more pictures of them on the wall.  They both said this was their favorite part of the weekend when I asked them later.  😉

Later that evening we had a picnic in the basement (Pizza!) and watched “Kubo and the two strings” (per K & J suggestion) and it was very good.  The kids have since then asked to watch it again and I admit I did enjoy it more the second time since I was able to notice more details.  The kids enjoyed it equally, both times.  😉  After the kids went to bed Kylene needed to get a few more steps in so we went for a quick evening walk and discovered a pond just around the corner from our house that I never knew was there.

On Saturday morning we enjoyed sitting around and just being lazy and the kids really wanted to play some video games with Justin so we enjoyed playing some Mario Kart together.  Then before we knew it, it was time for them to get ready to get all spiffed up and head out to Sara’s Wedding for the afternoon/evening.

Now, what will probably strike you most about this last picture is how Kylene and Justin are all fancy and the kids are in swimming suits… again… which is what brings me to the final memory of their trip.

Our air conditioner broke while they were here.

And it was hot.  Albeit not as hot as it was in South Carolina where they had just come from, but it was still hot.  Much too hot for comfort.  And our house doesn’t have the luxury of having any full sized trees near it to help buffer the hot sun rays beating down.  So… I will admit that poor Kylene and Justin had to listen to Tim and I complain an awful lot about how uncomfortably hot we were.  We did try and keep fans in the windows and the shades drawn–and luckily we had them sleeping in the basement so they were probably the most comfortable, but I still felt terrible.  It’s always a bummer when something big happens when you have visitors. So, hopefully that didn’t ruin their trip…  it sure didn’t affect the kids at all!  They were happy to stay in the sprinklers all day!

We have replaced our old air conditioner and have been enjoying the house being ridiculously cold for the past few days.  Hehe!

It’s official.  Summer is here.

The kids are out of school, I’m back to mowing the lawn once a week, we’ve gone shorts shopping and I’m feeling the itch to deep clean the house.

Yup, summer is totally here.

We’ve had a busy few weeks, but it’s been a nice kind of busy.  Lots of fun things!  Let’s see if I can do a quick recap (with pictures if I have any…) of our last few weeks.  I wanted to write about more of these things in detail, but as more time passes the more things I have to write about and then I start to feel overwhelmed so then I just stop posting all-together.  So, a quick bullet/picture post is better than nothing!  😀

Here’s what happened in May!

• Last day of BSF (hey, I actually wrote about that one!)
• Helped at an Honor’s Concert Rehearsal.  That’s the final concert for the MMTA contest.  The actual concert is going to be in early June.
• Chloe had track and field day (I wrote about that one too! Go me!)
• Attended Peter Greenhalgh’s Wedding Reception
• Mother’s Day!
•  
• My Spring Piano Recitals!  And then the day after all the cousins put on a separate recital for Auntie Jen at our house since she wasn’t able to come to the recital because she was so kind and offered to watch Maddie and Levi while they napped.    I was able to snap this picture of them all lined up to play for Jen.  It was adorable…
• 
• We had the Tim’s Cousin’s family here for a visit.  They are missionaries in China and have 4 kids (11 years old and under).  Super fun family!

• 

  Here’s all the cousins!

• Josiah and Chloe’s last day of school
•  
• Josiah’s Preschool Graduation
• 
• Went to St. Cloud to visit Shannon
• Tim’s Birthday!
• 
• Spent the day with friends in Owatonna celebrating Memorial Day
• And we spent the last couple days of May deep cleaning the house in preparation for Kylene and Justin’s visit this past week!  More on that later this week.  I remembered to take a couple pictures while they were here.  It.  Was.  Awesome.