California, Here We Come

We’re getting ready to go to California to visit friends and family over the Labor Day weekend. I am so excited to see everyone and to go swimming! In Iowa, nobody has pools but most towns have a nice aquatic complex that everyone goes to when it gets warm. The town where we live only recently approved a measure to build a new complex so there really isn’t anywhere convenient for us to go now. Not that we’ve had any time with all the work on the house anyways. It’s supposed to be in the 100-105 degree range while we are there so that will be a big change for us. I think it’s only gotten into the 90s a few times this summer and though it is humid, it is overall a lot cooler and more pleasant. It rains a bunch here, especially last week and then again last night it got pretty nasty. They interrupted regular primetime programming last night on all the major networks and were just doing weather. Here’s a shot of the radar and you can see what was headed for us:



There was a tornado warning in the next county over but we didn’t get one. In fact, it was never all that windy where we are. We did get some crazy thunder and lightning though. I took a video of it on my camera but I can't seem to get it to work on here. It shows up in my preview but not on the actual blog- I'm sure it's user error since it's my first time. I will try to get it figured out and post them. The videos were much better than the pictures but since that's all I've got, here are a couple.





We went up to Minneapolis this weekend to do some final shopping for the kitchen and pick up a few other things for the house. We got bedding for the guest room which only had a naked down comforter until now, some lamps for the living room, light fixture for the kitchen, a table and chairs for the kitchen and curtains and pillows for our master bedroom. It is really exciting to see the house start to come together- the kitchen is nearly done but for hanging 2 cabinet doors (a whole disaster I will save for another post) and the bathroom shower tile is all fixed and the shower is usable again. Yay for that! I'm continuing to enjoy cooking in my new kitchen. I made some banana bread on Sunday and then tried cooking some corn-on-the-cob (yummy) and Italian-style Meatloaf (also yummy). The people at all our restaurants we frequented during the remodel are probably wondering what has happened to us since we haven't been in for a while now. I think I'll just keep cooking though and let them wonder!