I've been MIA for a while.

My apologies for being MIA for so long. As seems to be happening more and more often here, I've been busy with cakes. Then I have to play catch-up on the house work, then it's been a couple of days since I've blogged, and I know it will take a while to upload photos, so I procrastinate longer, and then more cakes to do. It's seems to be a cycle. Then, this last week or so we've been having internet issues, so I got even further behind. This time, rather than trying to post something for every day I have missed, I'm just going to cover the highlights.

Camping

If you remember from this post, Mike built a platform at the top of Michelle's zipline. Eventually we're going to build a fort up there, but in the mean time, he set up our tent on top of it for Michelle to play in. Michelle spent the entire day in it and then decided she was going to camp out over night. I wasn't sure she would go through with it once it got dark out, but she insisted. She had Layla to guard her and she felt perfectly safe. I, on the other hand, did not. We have had bear on the property before, so after finishing up the cake I was working on, I grabbed a blanket and headed out to join her. She was already sound asleep. I think I could have had a great night's sleep if I had the air mattress, my own pillow, and more blankets. Our temps had been in the 90s for a couple of weeks before this, but they dropped that night and we both started freezing in the early morning hours. However, I was too tired to hike back down the hill in the dark to get more blankets. Instead, I just curled up with her baby doll's blanket and the towel she'd used earlier in the day for a picnic blanket. Next time...we will be prepared! I'm still quite amazed that she stayed out there all night. Brave little girl.

She even took her math work up there to do. :o)

Layla, the guard dog.

Garage Sale

Two of the things on our To-Do list for this summer were to have a lemonade stand and hold a garage sale and get rid of some of the junk that has been accumulating in our storage building. Last weekend was one of those unusual weekends with no cakes scheduled to do, so she and I got to work. We sorted, and cleaned and priced everything, then made some cookies and cupcakes to sell at her lemonade stand. Thursday and Friday she was a super trooper and helped me with everything both days, but by Saturday, her enthusiasm was waning, so was our customer base. We made $60 on Friday and only $25 on Saturday. Oh well, we had a good time working together and managed to clean out a bit of stuff. Since we have a large storage building, we were able to just move everything back in and are ready if we decide to have another sale before the summer is over.

She's drinking up her profits.

I have been so busy with cakes lately that I felt like I was constantly telling Michelle "no" when she asked about doing something fun this summer. So, we decided that after the sale, we would either go play miniature golf, or go swimming. She voted for swimming. I think that's part of the reason her enthusiasm for the yard sale was waning Saturday morning, she was too antsy to go swimming. I don't know many places around here to go, and the indoor pool that I did know about is closed on Saturday, so we stopped by the local motel that has an indoor pool and she had a blast playing mermaid and making a couple of new friends. I actually like this pool better than the big one. It's much closer to our house and they didn't have as many restrictions. Next time I think we'll grab her friends, have a picnic lunch at the park, and then go swimming.

Harvest

I've started harvesting goodies from the veggie patch the last couple of weeks. We've been eating snap peas and beans most every night. The tomatoes and cucumbers are taking a bit longer. Next year, we're going to have to make some room in the garden for corn. I LOVE fresh corn on the cob. The blackberries have started to ripen. Although we got a LOT of rain in May, the last few months have been kind of dry. I had a lot of flowers at the beginning of the season, but it looks like about 3/4 of those didn't develop into berries. I'm sad, but at the same time, I still have bags of them in my freezer from last summer. Tomorrow morning I will have to get up early so I can get out in the field before it gets too hot out. Last time, I waited too late, and once the sun is overhead, it gets way too hot, especially when you have to wear long sleeves, boots, hat and gloves to keep your skin intact.

 
Butterfly

I saw this beauty one afternoon and had Michelle run my camera out to me. I'm not sure if something was wrong with him besides the piece of missing wing, but he was moving kind of slow. I'm grateful because I was able to get a couple of great shots of him. Anyone know what kind he is?

 
Rainbow

One day last week we had a couple of quick downpours. It was one of those where it was a beautiful blue sky one minute and pouring buckets the next, which usually means there's a rainbow around somewhere. I was excited because it happened to be out the kitchen window where I was working on cake projects. 

Well, that completes the updates from us. I will be posting some updates over on the cake blog later today (I hope). I don't have any cakes scheduled until the end of August, but that's a big one, so I will be doing some of the prep work this next week or so. Hopefully things will be a bit less hectic here so I will be able to post more regularly. We'll see.

Till next time...
God's love and blessings. :o)