Food, flowers, and fabulous nails

Ava's favorite thing about going to the bookstore with me is the pizza pretzels in the cafe. She now associates pizza pretzels so much with books that when I tell her we're going to the library, she asks if she can get a pretzel. We tried our hand at making our own this week. We started with pizza dough, rolled it out, cut it into four pieces, and added sauce and cheese (Ava's going through a no-toppings phase).

Then we tried our hand at rainbow nails. I think the hardest part was probably getting Ava to stay still enough to paint each stripe. She was so exicted about them. The next day at school her teachers said she had to show them off to everyone. Next we're going to try to paint butterflies.

David bought me these at the grocery store. I love glads. I think they might be my favorite flower. They make me think of summer at my grandma's. She's always grown them on the bank near her house. Behind the flowers you can see my new (to me) curtains. They are the one purchase for the house that David and I both like equally (Thanks, Joslyn!).

Weekend -- July 16 & 17

I've decided to starting taking at least five photos every weekend. I feel like I'm always negligent on taking photos of all the fun things we do, and so they're forgotten. Now at least I'll have a bit of a record.

We drove across the state for a family reunion. I love long drives along back country roads. They're always so much more interesting than taking the highway. Mid-Michigan is home to lots of Amish families and we saw a few carts along our route selling homemade yummies. We stopped at one and Ava picked out a some molasses cream cookies and monster cookies. We thought it was so interesting that even though they had grown up in Michigan as we had their accents were so uniquely Amish. David and I always have the best conversations when we're in the car. It's my favorite part of long drives. No distractions means we can really talk. Love that!

Each year at the reunion they have an auction to raise funds for the next year. David's dad was always the auctioneer. This year they asked David to do it. It was so important to him to do a good job. His dad always made it fun and funny and David wanted to do the same in tribute to him. He did a great job, but it was a bittersweet reunion because we felt so strongly the absence of Lee.

We also got to celebrate the 30th birthday of one of my best friends in the whole world, Amy. She's expecting her second little boy on 11.11.11. Ellie snacked on toes while the rest of us had yummy burgers.