Birthday girl, birthday girl let me see your hands

There's no better way to start vacation than with a birthday...

Happy birthday, little one!

I'm so glad I was able to share it with you!

Outside in the backyard, underneath the trees, we're gonna grill it up

While we're on the subject of picnic and BBQ's, a few weeks ago, Jimmy's cousins held a house warming party with all of their family so we brought his daughter to go run around on their property.

As you can see, our day involved quite a bit of corn hole! I'm pretty sure we spent 75% of our time playing! Jimmy's cousin had a daughter a few months older than his so the two little ones spent most of the time playing and got along great. Pretty much his entire family showed up - aunts, uncles, cousins, brothers, sisters - including a few I hadn't met yet, so it was nice to meet everyone. Jimmy's uncle retired recently and now he does a ventriloquism act - everyone loved him! He did the "PG" version with a puppy dog and an alien, but I guess there is an "adult" act, too. Jimmy and I are really looking forward to seeing that one!

After everything wound down, the night ended with a bonfire and fireworks - just like any good Michigan summer gathering haha

Kind words and a real good heart

Source: emilia-jane.com via Amanda on Pinterest

I just recall picnic time with you

A few weeks ago, Jimmy's work held a picnic at an apple orchard out by my house. It was a pretty hot day but we went and had fun anyway!

There was lots for the kids to do - the first thing on our agenda was the play ground so she could show off her new gymnastics skills! Then we tried everything else including the bounce house, face painting, some games and mini golf. All of the guys played horse shoes, so while Jimmy did that, me and his daughter went back around and played some more.

We sat down for a few minutes and I took this series of pictures - I just wanted a picture of her with her face  painted but every time I would take one, she would get super close to the lens! 

I kept taking pictures like that because I thought it would look cool in a collage and I was right - I love the way all these pictures look together!

After Jimmy was done with his game of horse shoes (he and his partner came in third so they scored $20 - wahoo!) we did the rest of things offered before heading out - which meant getting balloons from the clown, of course!

They also had a ride on a fire truck around the orchard so the three of us did that (that's what the picture of Jimmy and his daughter are of) before going to look at the petting zoo and heading home. Pretty sure I ended up taking a nap afterwards - all that fun wiped me out!

Oh, honey you're so funny all the time.

I have a list on my phone of the funny things that Jimmy's daughter says - I love being able to look back and read them! She is such a silly girl!

• I'm like a raccoon, huh?
• There might be monkeys at the bottom of my oatmeal.
• Loose top lippin' is the right way to drink.
• If you fall in the street and get run over by a car I'll scream 'noooooo!' 'cause I love you too much.
• I got a joke- why did the chicken jump on the cow? So he was up high! How did the tree walk? He used legs! How did the tree fly? He used wings! How did the tree get into space? He used a spaceship!
• Sometimes oranges are called tambourines. 
• I can't look in the mirror because I'll get distracted and it will eat me!

She always has us cracking up!

Pizza, P-I-Z-Z-A. Gimme pizza.

One of the perks of my job that I've mentioned before is that I have the opportunity to take baking classes. I honestly don't think I take advantage of this enough! I took another one this past week and not only was it fun, and I learned a lot, but I left with so much food - we had to give over half away because the two of us just couldn't eat it all!

This time, I took a class on making pizza!

In class, we made two different kinds of pizza: New York style, with a thin crust and light toppings, and Chicago style, deep-dish, with lots of cheese, sauce and sausage.

(I totally blanked on taking pictures of the Chicago style-but it was just as pretty as it was delicious, I promise!)

We were able to make both doughs from scratch and made pizza with those, so we left with two full, ready to eat pizzas. We also had enough dough left over to make two more NY and one more Chicago! Told you it was a ton of food!

One of my favorite parts of the class was being able to bake our NY pizza in our wood fired oven.

It was amazing how fast the pizza cooked in there and it smelled so good! I even got to load my own - which I did successfully without ruining it ( it's harder to use a pizza peel than I thought it would be haha)

I'm trying to convince Jimmy to take a class with me - I think it would be so fun to do it as a couple!

Have any of ya'll ever taken a baking or cooking class?

Anyone make homemade pizza on the regular?

All my heros have colorful names and a bad attitude, short-lived fame with an even shorter fuse.

So before I hop in my way-back machine (Jimmy James, anyone? NewsRadio?) and go over everything I did this summer, I should probably start with something recent.

Like last night. That recent enough?

Jimmy's dad was in town and mentioned he was going to the Tigers game, so Jimmy pretty much instantaneously decided he wanted to convince me to go along. It doesn't take much to convince me to go to a baseball game, so after we found some tickets we were on our way.

There was a Kenny Chesney concert going on at Ford Field (which is right behind Comerica Park) so there were a TON of people and a TON of traffic. We left early, but were able to find some parking and walk a couple blocks to the park in time for Jimmy to show off his pitching abilities and grab something to eat before heading up to our seats.

It was also Elvis Night so that provided us with quite a few laughs throughout the game.

We were seated up pretty high so around the 3rd inning we decided to go see if we could find something better. We ended up finding pretty much the perfect seats- upper deck, right behind the plate, second row. I'm convinced that they are the best seats in the house. Unfortunately, they lost but we still had a lot of fun.

After the game, we stayed and watched some fireworks before we went out to Buffalo Wild Wings to eat and play some trivia. We both kept saying what a good time we were having - in fact, by the end of the night, my cheeks hurt from smiling so much. I'd say that was a pretty successful night.

How's everyone's weekend going so far?

Happy Sunday, ya'll!

I'm writing again, these letters to you.

Dear blogging, I missed you. I think our break has been good, but I'm ready to give it another go. Whatdya say?

Dear blogging friends, I missed you, too. Hope you're ready for an intense game of catch up!

Dear Jimmy, I'm excited. Really, really excited. I hope you share even half of that-if you do, I think we're in pretty good shape. 

Dear Apartment, I'll miss you-we had some good times. You weren't the biggest of spaces, but you were mine. Because of you, I'll always be able to say I lived completely my own :-)

Dear Crackheads Underneath Me, I won't miss you at all. But thanks for being occasionally entertaining...when you weren't waking me up in the middle of the night screaming.