Schlitterbahn!

Father's Day weekend, we decided to take an impromptu trip to Kansas City to visit the Schlitterbahn waterpark! The Legends is our favorite getaway area in Kansas City, so we were shocked to realize that the waterpark is right beside it.

So, the whole family got together on Friday afternoon and took the two and a half hour trek. It was a great weekend!

Last minute packing makes a big mess!

First waterslide of the day. The water felt SO cold!

Waiting in line to ride the Boogie Bahn, a boogie board ride! Loooong wait!

Me riding the Boogie Bahn. I did better than I thought I would!

Grant rocked the ride! He stayed on the board for a long time. Way to go!

Getting ready to leave...it was a fun, but exhausting day!

We ate at TRex and then went to Dave and Buster's that evening.

Grant won three bears in the claw - he got two of them in one turn!

A quick, but fun getaway weekend! We've been wanting to check out the new waterpark for a couple of years, and our summer schedule is filling up quickly, so we realized that it was one of our only chances to actually make it happen this year.

Hope everyone stays cool this weekend - it looks like it's going to be broiling just about everywhere!

Love, the George family

Heatin' up

It's really heatin' up around here! I'm already tired of the 100+ degree days!

Summer has always been my favorite overall season. I'm realizing now that the main reason for this is that summer represented freedom - no school responsibilities, minimal and time-limited responsibility at any summer jobs I held, hanging out with friends... It was a time to celebrate life and live it to the fullest!

Now that I'm "old" AKA "out of school," summer isn't the vacation that it used to be. Life isn't really any different from Spring to Summer to Fall. It was an odd transition for me, and one that I experienced well after friends of mine that did not go on to graduate school, including Grant. He went through a similar transition several years ago, and I didn't understand what the ruckus was all about until now. (Okay, I'll admit that he dealt with it rather gracefully.)

Anyway, I think I enjoy fall more than summer, especially because of the Kansas summer heat. It is an oven out there. One of my clients said this week that you could probably fry an egg on the concrete!

Despite my newfound love and appreciation for fall, we have definitely been living up the summer fun! Here are some of our latest adventures around Wichita!

Mom George (I would say Mom G, but that doesn't differentiate...crazy!) bought me this dress/skirt at a Gap megasale in KC. Grant said I looked so cute in it that he needed to take a picture, and I thought he did an excellent job at our mini impromptu photoshoot :)

Last weekend, we went to the drive in. We've already gone three times this year. The weather has been great for it, AND they've been playing the movies we want to see. We saw Brave, which was really good. Then, Grant watched Madagascar 3 while I slept. I can't stay up when the second movie starts well after eleven.

Bandit has been a lot of fun lately. She's been staying in a little more since it's so hot outside.

She was curious about what was in that box. We dug out our saved fireworks from past years after we shopped for new goodies! Today was the first day they went on sale here.

There's a lot to love about summer. The drive-in is only about 15 minutes from our house, which makes it an easy date option! The 4th of July has become even more amazing since my move to Kansas. It's so much fun to be allowed to light off your own fireworks!

I skipped talking about our trip to Schlitterbahn in KC. I am saving that for it's own post soon :)

This weekend, I'm heading off to see my dear friend Karli get married and Grant will be here holding down the fort. It sounds like he is going to have a pretty busy weekend of work and play. Hope he doesn't miss me too much! I'm sure I will miss him.

Love, the George family

CSA

CSA what?

Community Supported Agriculture, that is...a pretty cool community that we've been a part of for the past several weeks. It came to my attention via a facebook friend, and I started talking about it with Grant's family. We decided to go in together and try it out.

Kale chips make a deliciously light and healthy after-dinner snack.

 

We pay a certain amount for a share of produce, which we pick up each week for 22 weeks during the summer and early fall. It's been quite an adventure, as we've been eating foods that we've either never tried or rarely eat. The best part is that we are supporting a local farm and that we are getting fresh, organic produce. Most of it is harvested the day before we pick it up, and some is even harvested the day of! The added bonus is that the family also shares their favorite recipes, which have been a blast to try! Two of our favorites so far have been Kale Chips (pictured above) and Turnip Fries.

I cook my turnip fries more like chips...thin and crispy! Yum!

I can assure it that it is more time consuming to cook, steam, braise, and prepare all of our produce, but the benefits are well worth it to me!

Love, the George family

Yoda, wise he is

Grant and I have enjoyed several weekend dates this summer. Last weekend, we caught the end of Riverfest and went to see the traveling Star Wars exhibit. Even I enjoyed it, and I have to admit that I fell asleep during Episode I when it came out in theatres.
Here is our experience in pictures:

There were plenty of fun games!

The main attraction was the memorabilia.

We got to "engineer" a mini R2D2.

Striking resemblance ;)

Yoda, wise he is.

Experiencing what it would feel like to ride a hovercraft

I may have to watch all of the movies with Grant. He's been mentioning it since he saw that the exhibit was coming to town. I have been pretty tired lately, so I could probably use some extra nap time :)

More updates soon!

Love, the George family

Lions and tigers and Bri, oh my!

Okay, I fibbed a little. There are no lions in this post, but there are tigers and one special Bri!

For the first five days of June, we enjoyed the wonderful blessing of a visit by Bri, my best friend who still lives in Iowa. We always make sure to get together when Grant and I are back in Muscatine, but we usually don't get to spend a lot of time together, as the primary reason for our visits are to see my family. It was such a great weekend! Unfortunately, we didn't take many pictures. That's what happens when I'm enjoying myself too much! :)

We did go to Riverfest and took some pictures with the white tigers. They are just like big kitties! :) Although, I suppose they could eat you if they were really hungry.

We could have paid $10 to get a picture with one eating raw chicken, but we opted for the free version instead.

So glad you came to visit, Bri!

We tried to get a picture together. Just pretend that nice man in blue isn't standing there and you can see the tigers in the background.

So, those are the only pictures we took! We went to the Snow White and the Huntsman. It was better than I expected it to be. Kristen Stewart (Twilight, anyone?) delivered a pretty good performance, in my opinion (not that it's worth much). The story line was a bit slow at the beginning, but once the plot got going, I was hooked. The lady sitting in front of us was so into it that she was on the edge of her seat - literally. It was quite hilarious! She was also flailing her arms and pointing to her friends on either side.

We also played some games of Scene It, watched some movies at home, went on a couple of walks, went swimming and shopping... It was a fun filled weekend!

I will eventually get caught up to current time. Summer time is always busy busy! I have a trip to Louisville scheduled at the end of the month for my dear friend Karli's wedding (Grant's not going...we decided it was better to save the money on the plane ticket and allow him to not miss any more work). We are also taking a trip to the Ozarks with my aunt and her family, and my parents (hi mom!) are planning to come sometime in August! All of that said, we will have plenty to post about in the coming weeks.

Love, the George family

I've got an itch

I have had awful poison ivy for the past couple of weeks. Two little dots showed up the day before Grant's birthday and they continued to expand and show up in other places for days. By the end of it, I had a rash covering most of the inside of my right forearm. My right thigh was almost covered completely, and I had spots all over my left arm and leg. Once the first areas began to ooze and heal, it was a seemingly non-stop process of the next area oozing and the next and the next. It was relentless. Tuesday is the first day in over two weeks that I wasn't itchy somewhere. It is so nice! (I should probably go knock on wood now.)

I have never had poison ivy before, and I must say that I will be very careful from now on! It is not something that I'd like to repeat. But I survived. And got a kick out of some of the crazy things that people suggest to decrease the symptoms or promote healing. These were things I found online:  pouring bleach on it, scrubbing it in the shower until it bleeds, using household cleaners.

I tried many things that seemed more safe, and nothing seemed to help except for Oral Ivy. They are drops that you put in a little water and take up to every two hours. It worked well enough that I was able to tell it if was getting close to two hours because I would start itching again. It wasn't a perfect remedy, but it got me through.

Almost healed poison ivy on my right leg. It doesn't itch, but it still looks awful!

I'm not going to post any other pictures of my poison ivy, because I didn't take any. It was just too disgusting. But I will post some picture updates of house progress. My mom reminded me that I never posted an "after" picture of the fence.

You may notice the the fence boards are different colors...the pretty tan ones are new, and the others are re-used. It saved a lot of money!

We cleaned out the area behind the play set. I'm pretty sure that I got my poison ivy when we did that. It does look MUCH better now!

And we spent some time working on our storage room a week ago, so we could move everything out of our downstairs living room! Yay!

Organization makes my heart sing! So thankful to have a hubby that can build new storage shelves with ease!

It's coming along, one step at a time. We are finishing up some patches and painting now! It's starting to look a lot more finished. :)

We've had lots going on the past couple of weeks, so I'm hoping to post more updates soon!

Love, the George family