Summer so far...

So far this has not been a very fun summer for our family. The first week my boys were out of school I had to serve on a jury for a very hard case. It took an entire week to finish it, I am glad it's over. Alec had to go to summer school because he failed his math TAKS test. Summer school has been frustrating on more than one level.(more on that later)
If you have been paying attention to the weather you know that Texas is in the middle of a severe drought, and despite our sprinkler system our garden has been suffering. We just are not getting any ware near the yields we got last year, or that we needed. So far only 2 ears of corn and they were TINY. Sweet, but tiny. We did get a ton of grapes off our vine, they were little but pretty sweet. This is the second year we have had it so I know next year they will be just perfect.

But we had Cole's birthday party earlier this month. A pool party and everyone had a fantastic time.
The cake Derek and I made:
It took us over 5 hours but for never having done this before I think we did a pretty good job. Cole loves Legos so of course he had to have a Lego birthday party.

Alec's birthday is coming up weekend after next so we have to start planning that as well.

Last weekend Alec competed in his first shooting competition since he started shooting on the 4-H shooting sports team. We left the house at 6am and didn't get home till after 7pm. It was a long hot day!


For his first time shooting he did ok. He shot in 3 events, 5 stand, Trap and Skeet. It was his first time ever shooting 5 stand. To add insult to injury 2 weeks ago the firing pin on his shot gun broke, so he was borrowing an extra gun from one of his team mates. Saturday was only the second time that he had shot it. His gun was a 20 gauge and the one he borrowed was a 12 so there was a bit of difference in shooting it. He didn't place, but we didn't expect him to. He shot over 150 rounds that day and never complained, we were proud.
His gun has to go back to the manufacturer to get fixed so there will be no competitions for a while.

Work has been going very well for me. I started making ice cream at the restaurant that have been a big hit. Small batches using as many local ingredients as possible, and flavors that can't be found any ware else. I just made earlier this week a batch of chocolate stout ice cream using an amazing stout from a local brewery. It turned out amazing.
We got another write up in the news paper. An Austin paper this time. We will also be mentioned in the travel section of the Dallas news.

I do have some big news, new changes are coming to our house, but I'll save that for another post.