Day 2 Summer June 13

Got up early again to take the dog for a walk. It's not fun getting up early in the summer, but if we don't get a walk in by 8 am, it just ain't gonna happen!

Let's see, oh yeah, I was going to make pancakes because we had some strawberries to use up and then Mike suggested waffles. YUM, I thought. Uh oh, no pancake mix. Now for the most part, I do not use mixes; I prefer to make things from scratch. But I find that the pancake mix where you just add water is every bit as good as from scratch. Unfortunately, I was out of mix. So I dig out my fave cookbook, America's Test Kitchen, and peruse the ingredients. Uh oh, no milk. Seriously?? If you read yesterday's post you will recall that I was too smelly to go to the grocery store. Oops. So I ended up making oatmeal-cranberry cookies. Yeah, I'm not quite sure how I came up with that either, but the family was happy. Except Becca who picked the dried cranberries out of hers. Oh well. . .

We did finally make it to Sam's Club later in the day. And we made it out for about $100 which is really good for us. We got steaks, snacks, fruit, etc. So for dinner we had rib-eyes, grilled mushrooms, corn-on-the-cob and fresh sliced mango. Delish!

It was also my mom's birthday!! And Michelle's high school graduation! It's rough being so far away during all these celebrations. I just feel so disconnected from our families. At first it seemed like it might be temporary, but we haven't lived within a day's drive in over 7 years now. At least when we lived in Utah we could drive up. It took a full day but it was possible. Now we are 3700 miles away and we are limited to once yearly visits. This year we fly out on July 8 and we come back on July 26.