{pretty, happy, funny, real} – labor day

For Labor Day my mom and I were both free (we work at academic institutions that frown upon working on Labor Day!) and I took the babies down to her house for the whole day. We spent the morning getting her garden ready for the fall planting season (all our seasons are different down here in the low desert) and swimming in her pool, then swam again in the afternoon after my husband and dad were finished working and could come down, and had a delicious gumbo for dinner courtesy of my mom and brother. I’ve never actually had a gumbo that I liked before… I think this one is going to have to enter my recipe files!

{pretty}

(By the way, I’m so thankful that we live near my parents! The boys and their grandparents have a really special relationship, and it always makes me happy to see all those people, whom I love so much, loving each other and enjoying time spent with each other.)

{happy}

Some advantages of helping my mom with her garden: transplants of oregano and mint to take home to my garden, along with some basil and sage from the nursery (we all went with her since she wanted some new pepper plants), and a bag full of processed oregano from the massive overgrown oregano bush! She and my brother have been processing the leaves with a bit of olive oil in the food processor and freezing it in ice cube trays (my idea – and I harvested the oregano – but they did the more tedious work of stripping the leaves). It really is a handy way to store excess fresh herbs, and then a cube can be pulled out to use as a sauté base for vegetables, or part of a light sauce for pasta, or even as an herby sauce for a white pizza.

(I thawed one last night and used it as the beginnings of a pasta salad dressing, with a touch more oil and a bit of red wine vinegar to brighten it up, in lieu of lemon juice)

{funny}

I love the look on this kid’s face! And he loves jumping into the pool (actually, he likes to hold your hands and kind of step in off the side into the water… he did jump all by himself with both feet a few times though!) – and swimming in the pool, and knocking Daddy down in the pool, and pretty much everything to do with the pool.

What’s my {real} for this week? Just that all good things come to an end, I guess 🙂 I’m not very good at getting pictures of the {real} in life, now that I think of it – maybe I’ll show you guys the state of my kitchen floor one week…

I hope you all had a great holiday weekend too! Check out the rest of the link-up here 🙂