Things

Every time I lay James down for a nap or at bedtime, I sing to him.  Usually I sing “You are My Sunshine” or “Bim Bam” (a Musikgarten song with a very beautiful minor melody).  Lately he has begun to sing with me every time, and I almost have to stop; it makes me tear up.  One of these days I’m going to remember to record it.  I love it so much.

We set up the toddler bed in James’ room today.  He’s older than the girls were when they moved over to it, but he doesn’t have anyone kicking him out of the crib.  :)  It feels strange – he is the age Natalie was when he was born.  He’s sleeping in the crib tonight, but I want to be ready when the time comes for him to move on up.

Today on my way home from a friend’s baby shower I stopped to help rescue a dog that was crossing Kingwood Drive.  As my mom said, I really am her daughter.  :)  It was really nice to see two other people stop to help.  I offered to take him simply because I knew my mom would help and she knows how to get dogs back to their owners.  Fortunately this one was easy; he had tags with his name, phone number, and address.  I called the number and left a message.  I checked the tag again and realized he lived on a street in Kingwood I used to live on.  Since it seemed like a sign that it was one of the very few streets I could actually just drive to, I decided to see if anyone was home at the house.  They weren’t so I brought him to my mom’s.  A few hours later I got a phone call from a very thankful man who’d been out driving for hours looking for Twinkle, his baby.  He prayed when he saw his message at home that it would be about his dog.  It felt nice to have helped.  It felt even nicer I wasn’t the only one who tried.  So Twinkle is back at home and all is right with the world.  And I feel like I’ve done my good deed for the week.  :)

And now for some more catch up photos.

Last week my friend Candice brought over a few tomatoes from her grandmother’s garden.  They had an abundance, and she was so nice to share!

Joanna and Matt are the tomato eaters in our house, and I thought about just letting them eat on them over a couple of days.  But then I decided I wanted to make some tomato soup.  For some crazy reason I just really wanted to try it!  This is a link to the recipe I decided to use since I had everything I needed for it.  And it sounded good.  I halved it because that’s how many tomatoes I had.  :)

This is basically what went in it plus some garlic and dried spices.  (The jar is homemade broth from the freezer.)

Here is everything all simmering and looking delicious:

I used my immersion blender to puree the soup since I’m in charge and that’s what I wanted.  :)

I made grilled cheese sandwiches to dip in the soup – yuuuuum!  I’m pretty sure the girls both ate the soup but James didn’t go for it.  I even tried putting it in something so he could kind of drink it, but that didn’t fool him.  :)  I thought the soup was very good (especially for something so full of veggies!).  It was perfect to make right now since everything is in season, but it would be sooooo yummy on a fall or winter evening to warm us up.  There wasn’t enough left to freeze, but I bet it would freeze beautifully to pull out for a quick lunch.