50% Battery

Hi everyone!  Gosh, is July almost over already?  I haven't blogged in several weeks and so I have a lot to share with y'all.  Basically, I have a phone dump of pictures.  I'm running a bit low on energy this week (even though it's only Monday) so I suppose you could say I'm only at about 50% battery.  (In a nutshell, work is totally kicking my butt.) As such, this wont be the highest quality blogging, but hey, you get the pictures and the general idea.

Let's see.... I'm starting a few weekends ago when we hung out with our friends, Nathan and Mallory.  We haven't been bowling in eons (I blame my ankle) so we all decided to go to Splitsville.  Splitsville is pretty shwanky bowling.  The layout, vibe, service, and pricing suggests a bit higher scale bowling alley than your average smoky digs.  Still, we all had a good time and enjoyed the new experience.  I'm pretty sure that wont be the last time that Jordan and I bowl at Splitsville!

This is all of us taking a turn to bowl!  Top:  Jordan and Me.  Bottom: Nathan and Mallory.

These are a few group pictures and ambiance shots!

I'm not sure if it is unique to Splitsville or not, but one of the interesting things about Splitsville bowling is that they have a red neon bowling pin in the mix of all the other pins.  If the machine sets up the pins where the red pin is in the front center, and the bowler gets a strike, then you win a free game!  That's a lot of "if's" and you have to make sure one of the employee sees you.  Never-the-less, Mallory won herself a free game of bowling!  

Following Splitsville, we all headed to Top Golf.  I have to admit, I'm really not a golfer.  I don't know much about the game and I'm not very good at it.  It doesn't sound appealing to me to walk around a golf course in the sun whacking at a golf ball.  Top Golf has all the perks of golfing without all the annoyances.  Think bowling meets golfing.  There is a tall open building with several stalls for different groups of people - maybe 90 ish stalls in all.  Everyone drives the ball into the massive driving range and aims for certain holes to score.  You'd think it would be very chaotic, but each ball has a chip in it that can record how far you hit the ball and exactly where it lands.  It's really pretty ingenious.

Here are a few shots of Jordan golfing.  It was difficult to get quality pictures because he swung so fast...

One of the perks of not knowing how to golf is that I have zero muscle memory to over come.  It's easy to make minor adjustments to my body and stance (from Jordan's kind suggestions) because I'd never done it before.  Or at least I can't remember ever golfing outside of putt-putt.

For those of you interested in the mechanics of the game, I snapped the following picture for you.  This is a picture of the course (aka driving range).  Imagine golfers on the right side of the diagram all golfing to hit certain places on the range.  The black bar on the left of this diagram represents 235 yards.  Whew!

These are some of my favorite pictures of Jordan.  He really seemed to be in his element and enjoying himself.

Here are a few pictures from the scoring.  You have to select the name of the golfer so the system knows to assign your name to the balls you hit.  Each player hits 20 balls but you can do it in any order (if you're playing the "Top Golf" game).  Just like bowling, the screen shows you where your ball landed and how far you hit it.

Here are a few pictures of the final scores.  Truly, these are not very good indicators of how well we all did.  I got lucky on several shots.  The bottom right picture is a the result from a game that scored differently and focused more on distances rather than hitting the close up targets.  For that bottom right game, I have to go on record and say that my score is almost completely due to Jordan's line drives.  I was lucky to hit the ball 125 yards.

This was really a fun night!  Mom, Dad would probably love this for his birthday or something someday if you need ideas.

Fast forward a week and you would have found us doing a bit of cleaning around our house.  Have you ever cleaned one small area and then realized, it looks out of place unless you clean more?  Yup, that's what happened.  I cleaned one shelf in the pantry but it looked strange so I cleaned two shelves, and so on.  Before I knew it, the entire pantry was clean, the entire fridge was clean, and all the kitchen cabinets were wiped down.  Jordan was a trooper and helped me too! 

This is our terrible mess we made trying to organize everything in our pantry.  Someday, I hope to look back on these pictures and laugh at how small our kitchen pantry is.  Seriously, who designs a pantry this small?!?

The cleaning bug continued to carry me into the silverware drawer.  We have such beautiful silverware but we really use it for everything and it takes a beating. I felt like it all needed a good hand scrubbing.  The dishwasher does an "okay" job, but it felt good to get these drawers straightened out, literally.

And the cleaning bug suddenly got us outside!....Before we knew it we were working on trimming our bushes!

Needless to say, it was a productive but exhausting weekend for Jordan and I.  He is a really good cleaning partner though and we accomplish so much when we work together.  (I don't mean that to sound mushy, but it's true).

And that brings us to this last weekend when we went to the lake to celebrate Mom's birthday.  At the lake there is always something interesting or a some project to work on.  This time it was tree choppin'.

This is a photo sequence I got of Dad, Jordan, and Scott chopping a tree down.  I have several shots of this tree falling but I narrowed it down to 3 for you guys. 

Run, Scotty, RUN!

And the burly men got to work cutting logs and making saw dust:

 

Top Left: Jordan with the chainsaw

Top Right: Scott with the chainsaw

Bottom Left: Scott is making a pivotal cut in the tree while Dad and Jordan (background) pull on the rope to steer the tree's fall.

Bottom Right: I kind of like the look of the rings in the tree.  This poor tree had so many bugs and had died so he simply had to go.

 

Dad is like a machine.  The tree choppin' was barely done and he was already on the mower getting to work on the grass.  Mom and I enjoyed a little visit watching all the action, but Abby wasn't very excited about all the noise.   

And now we finally get to the good stuff, lake pictures!  I regret not having my zoom lens with me, but it's hard enough to carry my "nice camera" on the boat with the regular sized lens!  I might need to research a water proof solution someday.

 

Top: Cindy and Mom on the jet ski making waves and looking tan.

Bottom: The best boat ever.  Seriously, this thing is designed so well and fits the whole family. 

 

Scott and my cousin John had fun on the jet ski and I got some great wipe out pictures.  The top one is my favorite.  It's amazing they survived to adulthood, huh?

Bottom Left: John on the wake board

Bottom Right: AJ on the wake board

 We usually have ribs at the lake but this weekend we did Chinese food using the wok.  Well, I guess it's not a normal wok, it's a lake sized wok.

 

Top Left: Dad and Tony cooking squash and zucchini

Bottom Left: This is the food cooking up!

Right: Scott taking over for a while so Dad can do some prep!

I really liked the Chinese food and change of cuisine!  It was delicious!  Here is a picture of the smorgasbord. Wherever possible, I've started taking pictures of our lake meals just before everyone dives in.

 

The bottom picture is a guacamole crab dip that Mom made.  Oh, that stuff was the best appetizer ever.  It was a layer of guacamole, onion, tomatoes, crab, and cilantro.  It went fast.

You'd think the lake would be a relaxing place, but we were so tired when we got home.  I slept plenty over the weekend, but we were both done for the weekend and opted to just relax Sunday evening.  Mom had sent us home with some home grown peaches (thank you Uncle Tony!) so we decided to make a peach crumble.  We kind of made up the recipe, but it really turned out delicious! 

 Here are the peaches, washed, sliced, and sugared.  The bottom right picture is made up of a cake mix, vanilla, brown sugar, and a little butter.

We put in a layer of crumbles, then peaches, and then more crumbles on top.   I baked it at 350 degrees for about 45 minutes.  Basically, it was done when the whole house smelled like a peach.  It was really fun to make this with Jordan!

Lastly, I thought I'd share our little dove with you.  We have a momma dove who has taken over a corner of our fence and laid eggs.  I managed to sneak in a picture to share with you guys so hopefully, I can get some baby birdie pictures!

And that's all I've got!  Hope you all have a great week!