Summer Day of Cooking and Laundry... but Fun!

I'm still catching up on weekends from JULY, but this weekend, I go visit Sophie!! I was lucky to see her twice last year, once for her brother Simon's wedding in May and once when she visited Richmond in October, but THIS YEAR is different. This year I will be visiting a Casey family of THREE! I can't wait.

Meanwhile, here are some pictures from a fun Saturday in July where I hung out with the older Lual girls for the day. The goal was to talk about healthy shopping and cooking and to get a few loads of laundry done. I think - when it was all said and done - they just wanted a day out of the house. Oh well! We had a great time!

Achan and Awut

The fresh pasta guy at the Farmers' Market.

Aunt Crazy at the Farmers' Market, coffee and wallet in hand. (Both necessities, I'm sure you'll agree.)

Running into Molly's friend "B" on the farm bus. I used to babysit for Molly when she was 6, and as she grew up with this great group of friends in Fredericksburg. Lo and behold, one of them lived a few doors down from me. And if that's not enough, we run into each other on an old school bus that sells farm veggies at the Farmers' Market!

Hitting the Asian Market (Tan-A for you Richmonders) for a few more ingredients.

The fish looked awesome, but alas, it wasn't one of the 4 recipes the girls had picked out for the day.

The twins, Achan and Anger.

Ayak

Anger

Achan

A typical Saturday's worth of laundry at the Lual house ... there ARE 10 people living there, you know. It took about 8 loads.

The Sausage ... mmmmm, meat makes EVERYTHING better.

OK, so maybe I haven't learned the secret of making pizza dough with wheat flour. It was REALLY wrong. I think I downloaded a bad recipe from The Interweb, because instead of encouraging the girls to make this at home, they were TOTALLY turned off by the make-your-own-pizza thing and decided ordering pizza is way better any time. Oy.

Achan holding a ceramic ornament she made me a few years ago, which I keep on my kitchen wall.

The pizza ... don't worry! We still ate it. Again, did I MENTION how meat makes everything OK? Particularly when cheese is also involved.

Anger on the back porch

We got a little punchy towards the end of the day. Time to comment on one of Awut's treasured wrestling shirts - Shawn Michaels. I am still waiting for her obsession with wrestling to END (particularly this John Cena person she adores), but I think I just have to accept that it is one of her passions and it will never end. *SIGH*

So after pasta, pizza, and something else I forgot we made, the brownies. They were actually all right.

Even with wheat flour. :)