This weekend, Evin and I spent some time out in the backyard playing with water. It started out as me spraying off the porch and ended up with Evin in the pool–in his clothes.

Oh well! He had a great time! He even went bug hunting…

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Sticking with our “let’s use up some of our basil” and “we love pasta” themes, we chose to make Bacon, Gorgonzola, Avocado and Basil Pasta. Umm… it has BACON. We were sold.

We changed up a couple things. First, we used Feta instead of Gorgonzola. We weren’t really in the mood for Gorgonzola and thought Feta was a good substitute. Second, Vince wanted to throw in some shrimp. He cooked that up in some bacon fat and served them up on the side.

This recipe was good and easy to cook. There was quite a bit of prep work, but it didn’t help that we had to buy a block of Feta and peel the shrimp. There are definitely some ways you can save time on the prep, we just didn’t do that.

Vince said that he would probably skip the shrimp next time. I didn’t have too much of it, but I agree that it really didn’t add anything to the dish. The pasta is pretty flavorful on its own.

The only other thing I would do is add more salt and pepper as we were cooking. I think I just forgot to do that until the end and you could tell. It doesn’t hurt to add it at the end though. I might also think of putting some crushed red pepper in there as well. A little heat would do this dish good!

Umm… and it has BACON. So good. A pound of bacon. Delicious.

Overall, it’s a really good recipe. A good, light, summery dish. I ate the left-overs, which definitely means something. I normally pass and let Vince clean out the fridge. :o)

Side dish: Garlic toast.

Next time: no shrimp; try crushed red pepper; more salt and pepper; less sheepishly goaty feta cheese

Learned cooking tip: Smaller lemons work better in the lemon squeezer. Less messy; like a charm.

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Today, Evin and I headed into Phoenix to have lunch with my good friend Liberty. We were also able to check out the colors and carpet that I helped pick out for their new office. After greening-up the original colors a bit, the place looked great! ;o)

Then, we headed across the street to have some lunch. Evin snacked on fruit and mac n cheese. What’s better than that?! Maybe a frozen Snickers bar… hmmm, Lib?

Thanks for meeting up with us today!!! It was great to see you.

I’m not sure why Evin’s so serious. A new poker face, perhaps?

Yumm. This weekend we cooked up some Mushroom and Swiss Sliders with Spicy Fry Sauce and they were delicious!

We used Provolone cheese instead of Swiss because we already had tons of cheese in the fridge (there was a cheese sale!). Plus, after last weeks “gold covered” pine nuts, I figured it wasn’t such a bad thing to save a little cash. But, everything else was done according to the recipe and they came out great.

I think the only thing that I would change is the amount of ketchup that you add to the spicy sauce. It was a little too mayo-ee for me, but Vince liked it the way that it was. However, I do believe that my taste (or need) for ketchup is a little unnatural. So, maybe I’ll just make my own little side dish of sauce for myself next time. :o)

We also think, that with some extra special care, we could have cooked them on the grill with no problem. Pan frying them up on the stove was messy, greasy and our house still smells like burgers. Plus, I could only cook 4 at a time, which took longer than prepping all of the ingredients alone.

And last, but not least, we skipped the toasting of the buns. I think this would have added flavor, so I’m going to give it a go next time.

Side dishes: In the recipe, she talks about having fried onion rings as a side, but we cooked up some baked french fries and grilled corn on the cob. YUM.

Next time: more ketchup for spicy sauce; cook ‘em on the grill; toast the buns

Learned cooking tip: Use your thumb to create an indention in the middle of the hamburger patty. This prevents them from becoming too round (like little footballs) when you cook them up. It really works!!

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P.S. – Evin, using his imagination, ate lots of tadpoles (mushrooms & onions), shark teeth (fries) and pipe fish (fries).

Cassidy hasn’t been feeling so good lately. She’s lost a lot of weight and just seems to lay around a lot. So, we took her to the vet on Saturday to have some blood work done.

It seems as though our little kitty has hyperthyroid. We’ll be getting her some medication and hopefully she’ll be feeling much better soon.

In the meantime, she’s been loving all of the wet food I’ve been feeding her!

Evin has been in a great mood this week, but the two weeks before that he was quite the terror. Seriously. I’m pretty sure that he was cranky as he could possibly get. We thought that maybe he was sick or maybe he was getting attitude from school or maybe he was having a growth spurt. Really, anything we could think of… then, finally, the mystery was solved!

2 year molars! Here’s his new pearly white…

I’m so glad we have our happy little monkey back! But I’m a little freaked out that he has 3 more to go…

Evin is becoming more and more a fan of bugs. Each day that he gets older he becomes more and more like his Dad, which is fun to see. He’s just interested in everything!

On Thursday, Vince brought home a really, really, big bug. Evin thought it was so cool. Since it had big pinchers (and he knows what those can do because of the pinching crawdad incident) we had to put it in a little container for him. He got to hold it and watch it go from its back to its tummy over and over. Pretty exciting stuff!

Then it was time to let it go. He’s getting better at accepting that these things need to be able to return to their homes. There was a little, tiny freak out but he eventually just stat and watched as the bug escaped into one of our bushes.

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Thursday, Evin went back to school. His new schedule is that he’s with Gma J on Tuesday and goes to school on Thursday. He’s still with me on Monday and Dad on Wednesday and Friday.

He’s doing better when I drop him off. He still cries but it’s short lived and this time he was even smiling at me as he watched me from the window. He also seemed a lot less stressed when I picked him up, which I was very glad to see. He seems to be getting used to it and maybe even enjoying himself. However, he still doesn’t like to talk too much about it… bring up school and you just get a bunch of “No… no… no’s”

Last night we were singing the wheels on the bus and he did manage to let Ms. Becky, Ms. Tracy (his teachers) and Carsten (a boy in his class) ride along with us. So, I think there may be some progress there.

Here are some pics of Evin in his new shark hat that he made in school on Thursday. He loves his hat and wears it all the time these days.

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On Monday, we decided to have dinner out at Chuck E Cheeses. I think Evin’s getting the hang of everything. He loves to just run around and try all the games. He definitely has the toy part figured out because he kept running over there picking out what he wanted before we were even done with all of our tokens!

It was all pretty chaotic, but he ended up getting his lizards and bugs in the end. He was so happy! What a busy day… swimming, the aquarium and Chuck E Cheeses!

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On Monday, Gma J decided to hang out with us for a little while. So, after swimming we headed over to the aquarium for some fun. It was pretty busy, but that didn’t stop Evin from enjoying every moment of it. So glad we got those season passes because Evin is not showing signs of dropping his aquatic animal infatuation any time soon.

Thanks for joining us, Gma J!

This is actually the first time I’ve taken pictures on any of our visits…

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