Summer feels almost over which is sad, I'm not ready to go back to work. I have a local CTE 3 day conference this week that I'm not looking forward to, maybe it will be better than I think. It was just John and me for the 4th. We did our festivities on Friday, the 3rd. I figured it would be way less crowded to go paddleboarding on Friday the 3rd rather than on Saturday the 4th. That evening we also had a BBQ with friends which felt 4th as well. On the 4th we didn't do much. John bought a bike so we could go on some bike rides together. We've gone on a couple so that's been fun. He crashed on the first one, he's so tall and big I think balance is not his strong suit. There was no crashing on the second outing. Woot! That evening we used our grill for dinner, watched a movie, and watched some fireworks in our backyard. We live on a hill and you can see a lot of big neighborhood fireworks from there. 

This past week I had the kids and we went to Roaring Springs  several times. John joined us today, it was his first time ever, we had a good time. I've been baking and cooking a lot since I have more time. Some for practice for work and some because I just like homemade things. When I was a stay at home mom I only made homemade bread and I stopped doing that when I started working. I've made it a few times this summer and yum, yum, yum. I practiced making croissants again and had more success than last time. There were so many flaky layers. They take so much time and method and the batch only makes 6! I use every discarded piece of dough and have a few not perfect looking ones, I'm not wasting one bit! I also made homemade pretzels. We made those for a FCCLA fundraiser last year but they were kind of gross out of the freezer. The salt got absorbed and it wasn't appetizing looking. We still sold out though! This time I baked the pretzel without the salt and froze them. I then took the frozen pretzels and got them wet and sprinkled salt and baked them again. They were good! We will try that method this year. Nothing is as good as fresh from the oven but it's impossible to have 200 fresh pretzels ready to go when I have classes right before the fundraiser, these are pretty good! 

That's all for now, I'm just really enjoying this downtime and I hope I will be ready to get back to work soon because....winter is coming.

My pretzel makers.

Yum!

Tomatoes from our garden.

Because she's cute.

We had tin foil dinners for dinner and ate them at home. Boise is too hot to take them to a park or something.Woof.

Chickpea veggie hash. It was pretty good, I also try to experiment with healthy recipes, it's all about the balance. Haha.

Ryan and John on avalanche. No thanks, this ride is too scary for me.

There are 6 croissants that are more evenly made, the rest are leftover dough bits, that would be a lot of sad waste! 

A fresh homemade croissant is pretty incredible. Look at my beautiful layers!

Paddleboarding!