My mom is flying in today. (Yup, again! She's been here a lot lately.) But her flight is delayed, so I have a bit of time to kill before I leave to run errands and then pick her up from the airport.
So, I figured with the end of June rapidly approaching, and thus Peyton's (16th! Can you believe it?) Birthday and the 7th Annual Waterstraut Olympics, I should get a move on with wrapping up all of June events, which includes a belated Hobbit Day. You all might know it as Father's Day, but around here the one day reserved for the best dad around is Hobbit Day and we celebrate with meals accordingly.
Some years I make everything from scratch. This was not one of those years. I was like, I'll do pretty close to the same menu as last year, but I'm buying everything I can store bought. Between our anniversary and mom visiting and birthdays and school work, and other projects, I'm tired (I think I might be getting old).
First breakfast was grilled poundcake with lemon creme. Which basically meant I grilled up some pound cake, mixed some cool whip with lemon juice and sliced up some strawberries.
Hayden was the only one up for first breakfast, even though we decided to push everything back and not try and cram in first breakfast and second breakfast before elvensies.
Second breakfast is always meat heavy. We have sausage and bacon, and toad in the hole- which everyone always thinks is just amazing, and I'm like, guys, it's bread with a hole in it and an egg, calm down.
Luncheon is a SAMwhich, basically a grilled cheese with bacon, mushrooms and onions. But, the boys aren't big mushroom fans, so my divided pan came in handy here.
Serve it up with a simple hobbit salad of mixed greens, and some berries and you have a hobbit-approved lunch.
Of course after luncheon, you have to have afters- we had a mini dutch apple pie from the Publix bakery. Hobbits like pie, and the little ones are the perfect size for hobbit day.
Afternoon Tea is usually served with more sweets. This time we took more help from the Publix bakery and got a Chantilly Cake (which, Peyton now wants for his birthday, too!)
We mixed things up a bit and did supper before dinner, but who's counting? Supper is usually the one all of us but Asa bail on. I like mushrooms, but even I can't get behind mushroom soup. (Fun fact: this super had a peelie coupon on it, so I was pretty excited about that!) Along with the soup you have crusty bread and berries. I grabbed some of the garlic spread (from, you guessed it, the Publix bakery).
And then I told the boys they could pick any meals they had previously missed (Calib was at the animal shelter walking dogs during afternoon tea).
The nice part about hobbit day, is all of us (except Asa) skip various meals, or stuff we aren't too interested in. But everyone showed up for dinner of bangers and mash with a mushroom fry up.
And afters of the lemon crumb cake, again from the Publix bakery.
Elevensies was supposed to be an 11 pm thing for us this year, but we had it a little earlier. In the past I've made lembas bread from scratch. It's a lot of work, and nobody cares for it that much, so this year I was searching for alternatives. Enter a nice little charcuterie platter.
So, Happy Hobbit Day, a little late, to my favorite grown up.
Of course, it was a little late, because we were off celebrating our anniversary and this year Father's Day fell on our actual anniversary.
So lets rewind to before our anniversary, when Calib, Hayden and I made a trip over to Disney to see Cort, Holly, Gwen and Garrett. Peyton didn't really want to go (and since he's seen the Sattler's quite a bit lately), so I let him stay home; Asa was working. So it was just the three of us. We managed to get us all into the coveted beach club pool, so we spent the afternoon swimming.
We went up to their room for dinner, and saw their giant balcony. Holly said she'd been requesting one for years and they finally got it. The thing was huge.
And then, since our blackout dates were lifted for all of June- we went over to the Magic Kingdom with them. Shout to to Gwen who changed my Epcot fastpasses to MK fastpasses and got them all to line up.
We also had some ice cream for a snack and watched the Fireworks. We stayed until around 10:30 and then had to catch the bus back to Beach Club to drive home. At least the roads were clear that time of night, I've never seen such little traffic on I-4. It was glorious.
In other news, we saw the first day of summer, which is usually about the time we build Fort Waterstraut (aka the best blanket fort you've ever seen). But, I was a little concerned about Etta- she can get crazy and I was worried about her just knocking things over. I was also concerned about being able to make it over to the piano and home school central, so Asa and I thought it might be a good plan to go to Lowes and buy some PVC pipe to make a frame. The cashier thought we were just hilarious with our blanket fort supplies, by the way. We ended up getting 10 of the 10 foot 1/2 inch PVC pipe, but we decided we might need a little extra on the sides- so in addition we got 4 2 foot secitons, and four couplings, so we'd have a rectangle instead of a square. We cut two of the 10 foot sections in half to get our height of 5 feet and then just constructed a giant recatangle.
You can kind of see here that we ran the PVC pipe on the floor under the couch, and behind the TV, which ended up working really well. The whole thing just took 8 of those elbow joints (and four couplings for our 12 foot side).
Usually in the middle there is a chair sitting on the table. It works- but then you're down a chair either at the bar or the kitchen table, and you lose table space, obviously. So I sent Hayden out to the garage to get our ski poles from the Olympics (Yes, I keep things like that- but I almost always end up reusing them!)
I took a few zip ties to secure them to the table legs, and it worked pretty well. Now, this is an old $30 IKEA table I have no attachment to whatsoever, so it didn't bother me to zip tie anything to it, but it does seem to be scratching it up a bit- so keep that in mind if you want to do something similar.
It made the middle a little higher than the outer walls, which gave it a tent like feel. The 10 feet 1/2 inch PVC pipe will sag in places, but overall not too bad. Where the extended section was on the corner though, I did end up putting one more of those 6 foot ski poles in, it's a little wonky, but you can bend it to your liking and it makes the exposed edge much more secure.
But anyway, we put the ceilings in, and then the walls. Since we have the fan just outside the blanket fort, the walls were getting blown in a lot, and the dogs were a little confused on the doors, but it was an easy fix, I just used some safety pins to secure the bottoms of the wall.
And then the boys put in the 'floor' aka fuzzy blankets to make it all the more cozy.
And there we have probably once of the best blanket forts we ever built! The boys are lobbying to have it up all summer, and since we don't have any vacations planned this year that warrant taking it down, it might just stay for awhile.
Plus you can get to the piano and home school central just fine. It's perfect!
Our first night we got take out to eat in the blanket fort, per tradition. This year we had Burger King, because they just opened the brand new one they built over by Costco. (They're building SO much stuff over there, it's crazy these days. We're even getting a whole new subdivision built up by us, which I don't love. I actually read Pasco county is the fastest growing county in the south eastern US, so I'm not pumped about the extra people- but all the stores and restaurants is fun!)
Anyway, back to the blanket fort- the pets love it. Dipper is a fan (I also caught him mid-yawn which I thought was funny).
But all four dogs happily enjoy their time in the blanket fort. I can't believe how well they're all getting along these days.
Plus, now I can get back to one of my favorite past times- drinking and playing cards in the blanket fort!
We did go out this weekend too, for a quick trip to PDQ (Asa and I both had $5 off $15 coupons), and we stopped by the mall and Asa got me a Funko Pop. It's Porkchop, you guys--- My Porkchop's namesake!!
We also stopped by Duncheons, they got in a million new succulents. Hayden and I both picked some out. He used his money for a little vase and a cute little succulent, and I bought a few more for the front patio. They're kind of becoming an obsession.
Asa, meanwhile, picked up a raspberry bush!
In other big news, the boys have discovered Garrett's Youtube Channel. It's a family affair when he posts a new video, everyone comes running. (In this one, he dropped his mom's phone, which the boys thought was just crazy.)
Also worth noting: I'm officially the shortest person in my family. Calib passed me between 13 and 14. Peyton passed me between 14 and 15, and here's Hayden passing me up between 12 and 13.
We are adjusting to hour lunches while Asa works from home, and we've been riding out bikes and hitting the pool every lunch break.
Yesterday was the first day we've had the pool all to ourselves (thanks to a cloudy day and some thunder in the distance), so we told Hayden he could splash and cannonball as much as he wanted. He was super excited about that.
On the home school front, Hayden finished another Harry Potter book, so he got to pick his celebratory Harry Potter Funko Pop.
And while Calib has a cold, and hasn't been doing too much of his job (He's 'Wait Staff' this week, so he can't really be dealing with all of our food), Peyton and Hayden have been plugging away. Hayden is on Housekeeping (after a brief stint as Event Coordinator where he was fired for not Coordinating anything).
Peyton, meanwhile, is Animal Control Officer. He just washed all the dogs yesterday, which was pretty funny to watch (He'd never done it before).
Etta is really a two person job, so Asa helped with her.
I also finished all our state cards, so we can start those soon too. We're going to do them kind of like the countries.
That's it from here. I leave you with cute dog pictures (and Asa says he doesn't love them all-- LIAR!)
And I'm off to pick up mom, she finally left nearly an hour late.
Next Up: One more milestone birthday this year. Peyton is turning 16!
