What I Accomplished This Summer

Exhibit A: New recipes

Tonight's dinner consisted of warm blueberry soup--a new Swedish delicacy I recently discovered--served with sour cream and crushed walnuts. AND honey-roasted carrots with feta cheese and thyme, which the first time I did in the oven but this time I prepared on the stovetop, which is much cooler for summer. I don't know if Dear Husband noticed carrots, to be honest, since feta is his favorite. The soup had delightful warmth about it, so I can see why they often prepare it during the winter with blueberries saved in the freezer; and even though it was lightly sweetened with maple syrup, it was no dessert-y.

Those were more successful than the white-sauce vegetable lasagna I tried to recreate from residency, when it was my favorite meal on the Internal Medicine side (back before they had to switch to cold lunches to save money). Unfortunately, while it looks like the real thing, it was pretty bland. If I make it again, I will have to punch up the spice level. As it was, we resorted to nuking the leftovers and flavoring them with red hot pepper flakes or sage and marjoram.

Exhibit B: Cross-stitch and embroidery

Whereas in COVID Spring #1 I took up Settlers of Catan online, in COVID Spring #2 I decided I wanted something to do with my hands while sitting through endless Zoom meetings and a history of medicine conference, so I searched Etsy for cross-stitch kits with three goals in mind. The first goal was to make a pair of "Wash your hands" canvases to donate to a student group at the medical school to auction off for the local free clinic next year. With the extra canvas and floss I have, DH thinks I should make a matching set: "Wash your hands" and "You filthy animals."*

The second goal was to take on an ambitious cross-stich/embroidery hybrid of a golden bee as a housewarming gift for a friend who keeps bees. I had the fun of putting it together on two successive family vacations. Below you can see us at Lake Anna one quiet afternoon with it one-third done.

Then I had a #caturday with Rosamunda while at home.

I actually completed the final version at the housewarming party, since our dish was ready to take out of the oven before I had quite finished the honeycomb pattern in the background. J.H. plans to frame it for her wall of "bee art."

The third goal will be to purchase some anatomical patterns (a heart, a kidney, etc.) to cross-stitch with the next batch.

*In case you are neither a child of the 1990s nor a fan of the epidemiology series This Podcast Will Kill You, it's a joke based on the fake "classic" gangster film in Home Alone.

Sweet-16 Anniversary

Dear Husband and I celebrated our sixteenth wedding anniversary while at Lake Anna.

Traditional gift: wax (i.e. candles)

Modern gift: silver hollowware (i.e. an ewer, serving bowl, etc.)

We went with neither. Instead we had angel food cake with fresh strawberries and the BEST fresh whipped cream. It was heavenly!

Pic is from the local Caribbean-themed dive bar/family restaurant where we took over the outdoor patio to eat fish tacos, jerk chicken, shrimp and crab legs with margaritas all around, except I had a whiskey drink that tasted like a watermelon Jolly Rancher.

Here we are on cake-night:

Heavenly, I tell you!

No so fast

One day I looked for a non-alcohol-related local attraction and found the Sargeant Museum of Louisa County History. As well traveled as grandmother is, she had already been here! So the rest of us left her to do a jigsaw puzzle.

Although I had called ahead the day before to make sure the museum would be open, it was closed when we arrived! After briefly exploring the grounds, we found a nearby park for a short walk. Even though we had gotten lost once, by the time we got back--they were still closed.

Old, nearly all-wooden rails.

Old house that, I think, doubled as a pharmacy. There was also a one-room schoolhouse. Unfortunately, the supplementary buildings are not opened except on special occasions. Behind it you can see part of a teaching herb garden.

Despite ringing the ancient mechanical doorbell, there was no sign of life until we had decided to leave and gotten back into our cars to head home for lunch. Then the docent came out and explained they had just finished recording something and would we please like to come in after all.

There was a surprisingly large amount of content, with particular emphases on transportation and education, after the expected rooms dedicated to the original Native inhabitants and to the Revolutionary and Civil Wars.

I could not read everything until the group decided it was time to head back and feed grandmother lunch.

Next: Here come the bride and groom...

Here, fishie fishie fishie

Dear Husband captured this shot of us "steaming away" on our rented pontoon boat toward the open waters of Lake Anna.

A chilly morning gave way to a warm afternoon.

In addition to boating, there was fishing, including fishing from the boat, of course.

My mother is a champ-een fisherwoman.

Also the youngest one among us, who had never fished before in her life,

seemed to have the charmed ability to merely drop a hook in the water and pull up a fish!

Alas, I don't seem to have any photos of her catches.

Just look at the size of that catfish hooked off the friendly neighbor's dock.

This was a better day for a picnic under the trees at the water's edge and for fishing off the pier than for swimming, which is what we had originally planned.

::fish noises::

Next: A trip back in time

To the victor

 There were GAMES!

Foosball, which I'd never really played before but enjoyed immensely;

best for the ambidextrous.

Somebody just made either a very good or a very bad move at Mexican train dominoes.

The whole family played one night.

Settlers of Catan, original edition,

plus who says mimosas are only for weekend brunch?

Ticket to Ride, Junior USA edition.

...go the spoils:

To the left is what was going on in the background of the last game picture: creating honest-to-goodness-the-best-enchiladas-any-of-us-had-ever-tasted.

To the right, I try to recreate the success of veggie pizza pizza before we introduced Dear Husband to the original Jurassic Park while enjoying Pittsburgh Popcorn.

Next: [Click-bait goes here]

Up, up, and far away

On what would have been my paternal grandfather's 97th birthday, we drove to a public park to shoot off homemade model rockets.

Proud crew showing off a variety of the rockets that took to the skies. Alas, what goes up does not always come down: two were lost in the trees, including that red and gold beauty and a two-stage Batman rocket.

An impromptu silent disco dance party broke out in the parking lot

when we gathered to caravan to the site.

Peanut gallery

Preparations and earnest consultations at command central

Another day we played putt-putt. You can see how very sunny it was.

The victor--Dear Husband--treated everyone to ice cream afterwards, announcing with satisfaction that the bill was less than his final score.

Perhaps most exciting was that most (all?) of us got a hole-in-one!

Next: Indoor games

Home Sweet Away From Home: Lake Anna

For the last several summers, my father's side of the family gathered in a lake house in Virginia. Being more centrally located than Smith Mountain Lake [2019 blog post], we chose Lake Anna again [2020 blog post]. This time the Baltimore and Charlotte families stayed in one large house, while the Pittsburgh and Annapolis crew had a smaller cabin, and the Plano duo found a spacious condo nearby. The "party house" had no water access and a Jacuzzi we forgot to use. The cabin was set on a long narrow parcel of land with a tree-lined driveway to reach it and a long path and wooden staircase down to a two-level deck and the water. The condo looked out over the lake and one of the dams. Although a stomach bug knocked some of us out temporarily, and gravity knocked grandmother over, the head CT was normal, and nobody got horribly sunburned this time.

We did all of our favorite family activities: swimming, boating, fishing, playing games, doing puzzles, multiple grocery store trips to support cooking and eating, shooting off model rockets, seeing sites, visiting wineries or cideries, hiking, watching movies, making s'mores, drinking adult beverages, talking, and even crafting. The weather was beautiful, and it only really rained on us while trying to load the car to leave on the last morning.

Approach side. The swing is basically ruined by being located next to the garbage can.

Back side with deck, yard, and path to the water.

View from the deck in the morning.

View from the upper level of the dock.

How I will remember this trip.

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