My parents have come and gone. It’s always tough to say goodbye. But it is so nice knowing that we will be home for Christmas this year! I have tons of pictures to post but I bet it is going to take me a little time to get myself organized and motivated for a big post of pics!

The weather forecast is looking up so hopefully next week will be a week of summer!  I am looking forward to a few more “pack the pj’s and come back at bedtime” pool nights. Hope all of you are enjoying summer in your neck of the woods! Speaking of neck of the woods, starting early next week Seth and I will be doing our own new search for which neck of the woods we will be relocated to. Pray for guidance and wisdom!! Just to sum up the process we will get a LONG list, narrow it down and submit bids. Then we will WAIT and WAIT until around Thanksgiving.

Here are some weekly pics to leave you with!

park bliss

busy bees

he may be smaller but he has his way of thwarting Jackson’s plans!

burning off some extra energy…this was before the wipe out!

first tomato from the big plants! My dad counted 62 more on their way!! I see lots of homemade salsa and pasta sauce in our future! And tomato pie of course!

fried green tomatoes

Have a great weekend!

It’s official, Owen has now worn the cape and has now earned superhero status! Looks like I will be needing to order him his own cape soon! Jackson suited him up and with pure glee he ran around the house with his arms up!

In other news, Seth FINALLY got word this week that he has been tenured. The tenure board got delayed his year so we have been not so patiently awaiting word. It’s not quite like University tenure in that he could still get fired but it is job security in many ways. The biggest benefit is that he is now off probation which means he can be put up for promotion. Very exciting when you work in a government job!  Bring on the promotion, pretty please in time for buying a house!!!

Congrats to Seth and Owen on their recent promotions!  We are all sleeping better at night with with the addition of another Super hero and a tenured officer

We had a very low key Memorial Day this year. Jackson and I went to pick strawberries in the morning with a friend while Owen and Seth hung out at home. The field is about 10 minutes from our home. We all took naps in the afternoon and then had a relaxing evening together. Jackson and I made a Strawberry Rhubarb Pie in the afternoon and we grilled and ate outside for dinner. It was nice to be together on a Monday after a busy weekend. Here are some pictures from our day…

we picked 4 kgs..over 8 lbs of strawberries!

a bit runny because we couldn’t wait for it to cool! So yummy!

a la mode

It was nice this year to be able to explain more to Jackson about what Memorial Day means. He sees the Marine’s working at the Embassy so he now has some visuals of men and women serving to protect us. During dinner we talked about being proud to be Americans. Jackson announced that he was a Swiss American. We clarified that he was an American living in Switzerland. He looked over at Owen, who was chomping corn on the cobb, and said, “now that is an American eating corn”.

In our grocery store there is a bagged salad section similar to what you would see in the US. When I am lazy and don’t feel like washing lettuce (read: every time I go to the store because I am in a season of my life that does not warrant lettuce washing except for RARE circumstances)  I head on over and grab a bag of greens.  A few months ago I discovered that they have one bag that is the salad of the month. During the Fall I was pleased to discover chopped apples in one of the bags. Since I don’t speak German I usually don’t even attempt to decipher the ingredients. I just glance in the bag and if it seems relatively normal I snag it.

Yesterday I hurried through the store on my way to get Jackson from school. I grabbed the salad of the month for May. Much to our surprise last night we had a salad with heart shaped carrots.  Somewhere in the Swiss alps there is a machine set to cut carrots into hearts for the month of May.

I can’t even imagine what the salad of the month for June will contain!!