I’m home! Home at a last. Of course I’m completely overwhelmed with all the catching up I have to do. If I thought I had a lot of blogs to read before, now I am steamrolled! I met so many people that I desperately want to keep in touch with. It’s going to be impossible. Not to mention my real life is going to steamroll me too.

Right now as I type this (and the munchkin is sleeping blessedly), the mail is cascading off the edge of the dining room table and onto the floor, dishes are stacked a mile high in the sink (thank you Toby), the floor is vacuumed (also thank you Toby but this time not sarcastically), my motley crew of bulging tote bags and stuffed suitcases are sitting in the other room plotting a riot. The cats are noisy and begging for more food. The refrigerator is bare and the milk is going bad. I think my laptop is dying from over-use and too many photos. So I need to spend about a thousand hours processing photos, uploading them and then putting them somewhere else so my laptop can breath again.

I think I’ve been gone too long.

Was it worth it? YESSSSSSS! Toby says I need to write a long debriefing post linking everyone I met and be done with it. I don’t know about all that linking, I’ve probably lost half the cards I collected, but he is right. I do. I know I’ve already been searching the internet over to see what people have been saying about me and they’ve been saying nice stuff. (Everyone is SO NICE!!!) So I need to make an effort to do the same. It’s just going to take a while because I need to peel myself up off the floor and walk around like Flat Stanley getting stuff done.

Maybe you’re in the mood for a lemon drop martini made by Miss Whoorl herself? Just kidding! I wish she was serving lemon drop martinis! I’ve been trying to talk her into hosting a little cocktail party in her swanky backyard for ages. One of these days!

In the meantime, you can get a lemon apron just like Whoorl is wearing in my sister-in-law, cc’s etsy shop. I know you are probably sick of me pimping out my relatives on this site but this apron is CUTE!!!

Is it not? We did a little photo shoot at Whoorl’s house yesterday and had a lot of fun goofing off. Whoorl is the best model. Too bad half the photos I took were blurry! My habit of hating to use a flash will be the end of me, I swear. But we did get a few good ones. Check them out and send cc some traffic too… there’s probably somebody who needs a domestic diva apron! We’ll get to blogher one penny at a time!

The other day Baby Bug and a friend and I walked to the Farmer’s Market and out the corner of our eyes we spotted some LEMONS! Right away, we all thought about making lemonade. Sure, you can buy the powdered kind or even frozen concentrate and maybe it tastes just as good BUT there is something special about making your own lemonade from real lemons. I think the only thing I might like better would be if I could pick lemons from my own tree… maybe someday. Until then I’ll get them at the farmer’s market or from Bethany’s new house.

I’m always looking for fun little easy projects that will help us burn up the daylight hours productively. Lemonade is very easy to make. Even Baby Bug could do it!

Well mostly. The lemons were a little tough for her to squeeze but that didn’t stop her from enjoying the hands-on process thoroughly.

The best part, of course, was the mixing. I didn’t follow a recipe. I think half the fun is figuring out the proper water/sugar/lemon ratio by tasting. It’s like a scientific experiment for very unscientific people like me.

We tasted and we tasted and we tasted and we also added a LOT of sugar. The only problem is that we had so much fun, now Baby Bug wants to repeat the whole experiment every time I pull out the pitcher for another glass.

She’s so OCD* like that. If you repeat anything fun more than once then that is the way it must be done from now on until the end of time! I might just have to make up a pitcher of straight lemon juice and make “lemonade” one glass at a time.

Or just distract her with something else fun and repeatable, like a impromptu lemonade and chocolate cookie snack on the patio. We can definitely do that again and again. I just love the patio during summer. It’s really the best room in our house.

Cheers to lemons and enjoying summer afternoons! May we repeat this for many moons to come!

*BB is not OCD she’s just very TWO.