Friends, Pizza, and Cake

Friday night we had our new friends Megan, Zach, and their baby girl Andi Gibbons over for dinner and a game. We had a lot of fun with them. For dinner we had some pretty fabulous pizza, pepperoni & sausage and canadian bacon & pineapple. I wish I had taken a picture of them. The best part was that it was cool enough to actually bake pizza. For dessert we had some lemon cake

This cake comes from Molly Wizenburg's new book A Homemade Life. It's a delightful food memoir. Read it with sticky notes so you can mark which recipes you want to make. I marked about 30 by the time I was finished. The funny thing about making this cake was the I realized I don't really like lemon cake. Yes, I definitely enjoyed it, and I am definitely going home and eating the leftovers when I finish posting, but while I sat eating it I thought of all the things that would have been better. Steve loved it; it was the tartness of the glaze. It was moist and easy to make. Although I apparantly don't like lemon, if you do, I would recommend it.

A walk and a Picnic

As time wound down for me to go back to work, Texas decided to rain, for seven days straight. This is weird, especially for mid September. It was acting like Autumn. During a short pause I decided to go for a walk. It was fabulous because 1) it was cool enough to walk and not sweat and 2) I saw cool things around my neighborhood.


The rain stopped for the weekend, and Monday evening Steve took me on a picnic at the Botanical Gardens to celebrate my going back to work and the test he took that day. I made chicken salad sandwiches, potato salad, and sliced peaches that were extremely disappointing. On my friend Elise's blog she said the cool summer made the peaches not that great in Pennsylvania. Here in Texas we definitely didn't have that problem, but maybe the heat did something to them :)


After the picnic we went to the duck pond and fed the ducks and geese. I've never seen this many geese in a duck pond before; they were intense. As we walked over the moved in on us, squawking the whole way.

Work has been going well for me this week. It's good to be back. Steve is still enjoying school. The little excitement that we do get, besides feeding wildlife, is the TV show The West Wing. We started it at the beginning of the school year and are into the 3rd season. If you've never seen it we would recommend it.

Time at Home

So the last few weeks I've been spending time at home.

This is me like three weeks ago at Baylor All Saints Hospital

I went in for surgery on August 19th and have been enjoying my time (well, resting) since then at home. For anyone who is shocked or worried at this don't be. I had my first check up yesterday and the doctor said the incisions looked great. I thought this was a good sign seeing that he was one who made them.

So, now I have four fewer inches of intestines and besides being slightly more tired than usual and not able to bend I'm enjoying not having to go to work. I'm knitting and watching TV and reading. Our ward members have been great support to us as well.

Also, thanks to my mom and mom-in-law for all the time they spent taking care of me, my husband and our home these last few weeks.