Glimpses of our Saturday-

This morning Nathan was up bright and early, headed to a work meeting while I stayed under the covers to sleep in on our weekend morning.

We made Navajo Fry Bread for breakfast (not our usual morning fare, but we had bread dough that needed to be used). We topped it with aromatic honey flavored with Lindon blossoms. Super yummy.

We tackled Saturday chores with vigor this morning, and cleaned out several closets in addition to our regular deep cleaning chores.

I enjoyed watering our fruit orchard this morning while watching the wildlife (until we found a black widow and her web at the base of a peach tree. Sarah begged to keep it as a pet in her room. Yeah, right.).

Nathan came home around lunch time and made some killer sandwiches on toasted homemade bread. The fillings were bacon, sliced avocado, tomatoes, lettuce, caramelized onions, and scrambled eggs topped with cheddar and Sriracha sauce. Oh heavens, was that amazing. The boys and I enjoyed every single bite and sang Nathan's praises all afternoon whenever we remembered the fond memory of our meal. He loves cooking for us, and I love eating his creations. He said this was one of the hardest aspects of my long trip with the children- he didn't have anyone to cook for. So he cooked for friends a few times, creating feasts of Indian food to share. (Oh, I forgot to mention he also learned how to tan hides while I was gone. We came home to deer hides stretched and tanned in my art studio....now we need to figure out what to do with them!)

The children have been enjoying long bike rides to the park this week. On Friday Sarah rode 10 miles and encouraged her brothers to build up stamina....but they only had 2 working bikes for the 3 kids. So they would rotate who rode the bikes and who jogged beside the rest. This was the glimpse I caught as they disappeared for their ride.

Today they begged Nathan for help in fixing up several bikes. He spent an hour or so teaching Sarah how to remove and patch her own tires and showed Matthew how to attach training wheels properly to Joseph's bike, taught everyone how to remove the rust from their neglected bike chains, and made several little adjustments for everyone and dissected my bike to refurbish several other bikes.

The minute they were finished, the kids packed water bottles and left with Dad for another trip to the park. It's a 3 mile bike ride on quiet country lanes. It's pretty beautiful.

Joseph stayed home with me and helped bake chicken enchiladas for dinner. He has really loved helping in the kitchen lately. Any time I begin to cook something, he runs into the kitchen and begs, "Mom, I help too? Please?" Then he drags a big heavy chair across the floor so he can stand on it and give me a hand cracking eggs or stirring ingredients.

When the bikers came home, Joseph really really wanted a ride on Dad's bike, so Nathan took him for a little spin down the street. The whole time, Joseph was giggling and squealing, "This is FUN! I like riding bikes!"

In the evening we pushed all the couches away, rolled up the rug, and had a family dance party. We played fun pop music and practiced all the silly dance moves we knew. Such a fun night!

I made a batch of white-cheddar popcorn and Nathan cooked a batch of drop-dead-cause-it-tastes-so-good salted caramel popcorn studded with dark chocolate and melted marshmallows. Oh heavens, that stuff was decadent! We each filled our bowls with half of the cheddar popcorn and half of the sweet popcorn, then enjoyed watching episodes of Avatar together.

We stayed up and played until nearly 2 am.....I think this is a good way to spend a summer weekend!