Summer Weekend Wrap-Up

 

I was going to write up posts about my mom-daughter vacation in the North Country (ADK) that I took with oldest girl last week.  But....it seemed redundant since I shared so many of the pics in a FB album and then as part of my Fave Fives. So I'm doing a Weekend Wrap-Up and got the idea from my friend and fellow blogger Deb from over here. 

silk flowers I found on sale at a local craft store!

Friday was a "get stuff done" day since I had been gone most of the week.  I had to do laundry, work on hiking details for the SoulStep members who signed up for this week's hikes, and do some much needed mopping and vacuuming. By early evening, I was picking some basil from our pot on the deck and making BLT's for dinner to go with the veggie pasta salad I had made earlier in the day. I also made some homemade blueberry muffins as we had a lot of fresh blueberries to use up. For dinner, I used tempah in place of pork bacon (I haven't eaten pork since 2015 and no longer buy turkey bacon as Dave doesn't care for it, but he is willing to eat the tempah  which is basically just fermented tofu.  I buy the smoky flavored one as it's easy to crisp in a little bit of avocado oil and it does come out like regular bacon but is so much better for our bodies!  I put it on fresh farm stand tomatoes, crispy baby lettuce and  a few leaves of our basil along with Miracle Whip for Dave and Vegan Hellmann's for me. I used Oat bran bread which is baked in my childhood hometown area!  It was a delicious dinner. We ate outside on the deck as it was a beautiful and not too hot or humid evening.  In fact, after dinner I went for a walk, and then read on the deck for quite awhile. 

tempah "bacon"

On Saturday, we slept in a little, took a power walk before the heat set in, and then I did  some Scripture study and did some reading in the morning sunshine.  After we took showers, we had to get ready to leave for the central part of NYS where we were meeting my college friends Paul and Kim. Paul and I (and then Kim) reconnected quite a few years ago on social media and I hadn't seen them in person since 1982!  That's the year I graduated with my BS in Music Education/Piano and they were juniors. It had been 42 years since we had been together. It was wonderful to sit, eat good food, drink good wine and catch up.  We talked for a little over 2 hours!!  Then they went back home to Rochester and Dave and I popped in to my childhood hometown on the way back to Albany to check on my parents' graves. We were home by 5 pm so just relaxed the rest of Saturday evening. Dave had to do some stuff on his work computer in his office upstairs so I watched a couple episodes from a series I'm liking on Netflix. It was a great day! And thankfully, we had turned on the central air and closed all the windows because by the time we returned from Utica, it was very hot!  We are back to having a heat wave! Our third one since summer began here in eastern NY. 

Paul, Kim, me, Dave 

Sunday, we got up, showered and went to the 9 AM service at church where Pastor Rex spoke on Romans 8:28 (click the blue link to see the sermon) and what it means for us as Believers and what it does not mean! Sadly, both Dave and I have been on the receiving end of well meaning people who totally took this verse in a wrong way.  I'm so thankful to be in a church where the pastor has a solid background of teaching and an actual seminary degree unlike the church where we met.   We are thankful daily for our pastor and his team of people. It's a blessing to be a part of our church and it's been home to us now for 20 years!! We were at the former one for 15 years as a married couple and I must say they did do an excellent job with intercessory prayer and I did have a couple of very good friends there. Those friends left before we did though. I'm just so thankful God showed us where He wanted us even though it took many years. 

  After church, I put together some veggies and other snack  foods and my youngest daughter came over so we could both go to this state park which we had only been to once this summer.  Dave wanted to do some yard work before it got up to 90, so he stayed behind. Claire and I had a good time at the beach, did a lot of swimming because it was so hot, and was home by 4 pm.  She left for her own apartment and I showered and made an early dinner of chicken and garlic stuffed ravioli with a light olive oil drizzle, basil and minced garlic; tossed salad, and breadstick. It was delicious and easy to make and then I watched a movie on Hulu (a true crime story) and Dave did some pod cast listening to his fave people. After the movie, it was just starting to get dark, so I went out for a walk around the yard and to water my plants before coming in and reading some of my fave blogs and some more reading in the non-fiction book I'm half way through. 

beach time with the ballerina

I'm thankful we had a good, mostly relaxing weekend.  Today I tackled the stove and gas burners.....got them all cleaned up,  cleaned the appliances, mirrors and cupboards, put laundry away, went to a meeting with the organization I volunteer with, took another book back to the library that I finished yesterday, and then did a Target run.  The rest of the day includes cooking a tofu veggie dinner, practicing our choir music, and talking a walk tonight when the sun goes down because this day is HOT! (91 as I type this at 3 pm). 

I hope your week is off to a great start!