Blueberry Pie

One of my favorite things to do in Michigan is to pick blueberries. I don't even like blueberries all that much, but fresh Michigan blueberries are pretty tasty. When you stop at a U-Pick place, they give you little buckets to either carry or tie around your waste with a string and you can just pick to your hearts content. Most of the blueberries I pick end up in my bucket, but Michael always ends up eating waaay more than he takes home. Needless to say, we came home with several pounds of fresh blueberries, so I decided to make a pie out of some of them.

Ingredients:
5 cups blueberries (fresh or frozen)
2/3-3/4 cup sugar
3 tablespoons flour
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
Double crust pie (homemade or I used the refrigerated pilsbury pie crust)

Directions:
Combine the sugar and flour in a large bowl. Add the berries and cinnamon. Gently toss the berries until they are fully coated. If you use frozen blueberries, let the mixture sit for about 40 minutes to defrost. Put the mixture into a pastry-lined pie plate.

Next, put the remaining crust on top of the pie, poking holes in the top. You can also cut the other crust into strips and make a lattice pattern (which is what I did). cover the edge of the pie with foil to prevent overbrowning and cook at 375 for 25 minutes (or 50 minutes for frozen fruit). Remove the foil and cook for an additional 25-30 min. The filling should be bubbly and the crust brown. 

Enjoy!!

New Floor!

I have wanted to replace the downstairs carpet ever since we moved into our house. Right after we moved in, we got Titus. Potty training a puppy in a house with carpet is not the best idea. Especially when your carpet is a light cream color like ours was. I mean really, who thinks its a good idea to put cream carpet in a house?? Needless to say, our carpet after a year and 4 months of living there was pretty disgusting.  I just love hardwood, so we have been saving for awhile and finally got new floors! We ended up getting engineered hardwood instead of laminate because it should hold up pretty well with the pups.

Here is a picture of the living room before (quite a while before, looked a LOT dirtier before we put the wood in):

This is how it looks now:

We LOVE it!!

Vacation part 2

The whole group and my favorite picture of the week 

After our oh so relaxing week in Michigan with the pups, we drove back to Texas, re-packed, left the dogs with aunt Julie and drove to Colorado. We stayed at Horn Creek family camp with Michael's sisters and their families. The elevation there is about 8,500 feet so it was gorgeous weather.

This camp is a pretty cool place. They have little cabins where individual families can stay and they serve you 3 hot meals per day and they do all the cleaning! At night, they had a little mini worship service with a speaker. Our speaker was from a church in roundrock which was pretty neat.

We had a ton of fun and did a lot of different activities. On site at the camp, we took small hikes with the kids, played on the water slides, and bowled at the activities center.

Braeden at the water slide

Horn creek peak

On Thursday, me, Michael, Ryan, Braeden, and Josh went on the big peak hike. The horn creek peak is at 14,000 feet elevation. We left at 6am for this hike. Now I would like to think that I am in decent shape (a belief based on the fact that I have been exercising regularly for about 2 months). However, I am in terrible shape for mountain climbing. This hike was the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. I am proud of the fact that I made it to the tree line and was able to see great views, but I will NEVER do that again. I had great ambitions of making it to the top, but turns out that there is basically no air at 12,500 feet elevation and I just couldn't get my breath to keep going. Michael was sweet (or tired) enough to wait at the tree line with me while the others attempted the peak.

view from the tree line

Tuesday was white water rafting! So so much fun. The only downside was me getting slammed against a rock and having a very nice bruise on my thigh. Totally worth it though. I loved those rapids.

Rafting group

On Wednesday, we all drove out to the Royal Gorge (about an hour away) and met Uncle Brian. The gorge is huuuuuuge and we got a ton of great pictures.

Needless to say, it was a really great vacation all around, and we really hated to come back to real life. I'll end with a couple of really cute pictures of the girls from this week, just in case you haven't looked at enough pictures yet ;) 

Vacation part 1

So we just got back from a wonderful and much needed vacation. We spent a week in Michigan and a week in Colorado. Today you get to hear about the week in Michigan.

view from the back porch

I love this place. Michael's uncle owns a cottage on the beach of lake Michigan that we go and stay at when we visit his extended family (yes, its a real beach with sand and everything- but better than other beaches b/c there is no salt water!!). Usually the weather is low 80s during the day and 60s at night, but there was a crazy heat wave the week we were there. The good news is that a heat wave in Michigan is still much much cooler than Austin. I think the highest it got was about 92 degrees, and that just made the water warmer for swimming and jet-skiing.

Highlights of the week: eating delicious meals every night for the low cost of  washing dishes all week, playing with baby Kelly Hope (the happiest baby you have ever met), eating Miss Lisa's ice cream every night after dinner, falling asleep listening to the waves, picking (and eating) michigan blueberries straight off the bush, and the dogs completely wearing themselves out every day chasing tennis balls and swimming. 

Not a bad week of vacation if I do say so myself. 

Kelly Hope!

*Our cousin Erin took some great pictures of the pups playing their hearts out!