A baking fiend.

That's what I am, apparently. I just pulled the first two loaves of fresh chocolate chip zucchini bread out of the oven, and these were made with the first zucchini from our garden. (The second zucchini is still waiting in the fridge to be used in tonight's dinner.) It smells so heavenly in here!

I made the cupcakes yesterday, and I'll probably make some banana bread tomorrow. On Monday, I'll make some more cupcakes to take to the Independence Day shindig. My oven will have been used every day in July (so far, that is), whereas it only saw the light of day a few times in June.

As for the garden, I realized last night that I never posted progress pictures after that first week in June. I dutifully took the pictures each week, but I never posted them. It has changed so much since then! I might just post new pictures that I took this morning to kick off July. ;-)

We're heading out to the pool in a bit. July is shaping up to be just as awesome as June!

Dinner.

It was a "Feel Good" dinner night. I cleaned and packaged a bunch of chicken breasts this afternoon while the zucchini bread was baking, and I left one bag out of the freezer for tonight's dinner. After we returned home from the pool, Philip grilled mesquite chicken (basting it in the last few minutes of cooking, rather than marinating it beforehand) while Marissa showed me how to saute my zucchini to make it tasty. The boys had bagels, pineapple and grapes, and I had whole wheat bread and a large fruit salad (watermelon, grapes, blueberries, pineapple, banana and strawberries) with my meal. We all had our first slices of chocolate chip zucchini bread for dessert. Mmmmm!

We're heading out right now to pick up some pictures from developing. Philip is at an X-Box 360 tournament tonight, and he took his machine plus almost all of our extension cords. I'm sure he'll have fun. :-)

Oh, and owensboro_hope made me this new "Slytherin Prince" icon. Isn't it fab?!

Pool pictures - literally!

We bought a one-time use camera for taking pictures underwater, and we used it today at the pool. While it did take "okay" pictures, I do really miss the sharpness of our digital camera. And it also isn't as cool to drop off a camera and pick up prints and a CD an hour later as it is to just pull them straight from the camera onto the computer.

For $8, it doesn't do too bad of a job. However, I'm sure there's a learning curve with these things, and we didn't grasp it today. You can't zoom in with a disposable camera, and it doesn't "see" very far underwater. You *have* to open your eyes underwater to see through the viewfinder. Philip and I both wear contacts, so we have to use masks or goggles underwater. The thickness of the mask combined with having the viewfinder so much further away from my eye than usual makes for an awkward shot. Also, just as I would get in the right position, my body would float upwards and I'd lose the framing. However, my shots were much better than Philip's shots (as evidenced below).

But it was fun, and the boys thought it was so cool that this camera could take pictures in the water. :-)

About an hour after we'd been swimming, we were surprised to see Philip's manager from Runza show up with his family. We swam and played with them for a while, and it was nice. Ryan even took a picture for us of our whole family coming down the platform slide together - yay!


Jack swims straight for the camera.

( All the pictures from the pool. )

I quit swimming about 20 minutes before closing time, and I took a real showe and dressed just as the whistles were blown for everyone to get out. Then I hauled everything to the car and waited on the boys to arrive. And Philip left his swim trunks at the pool (he realized this as I started a load of our suits and our towels in the laundry as soon as we got home). :-P