After a RECORD-BREAKINGLY dismal early summer in the Pacific Northwest, we've had - GASP!!!! - some sunshine and warm days!

The neighborhood is positively blissed - everyone is actually OUTSIDE without being rained on. THE TEMPERATURE WAS IN THE 80'S!!! (the daytime high a week ago was an astounding 54.)

Our neighbors Jay and Connie invited us to a musical event at a local winery last Thursday night. It was PERFECT - live music, delicious wine, and barbecue on an absolutely PERFECT evening. What could be better than THAT?

And here's a downside of losing weight - not me - heaven FORBID - but my husband - his pants is always too big! He wore his special silk shorts from last year - which are now two sizes too big. PANTS ON THE GROUND! He and Connie were set on dancing, PLUS he'd forgotten his belt - omg - he had a hell of a time trying to keep his pants up! :) (He's lost 80 pounds since we moved in together.)



We went to the coast on Sunday - it was so beautiful. It is rare to have sunshine on Oregon beaches, but we had it, and we got the primo fire-pit that I've always wanted to have. We had a weenie roast and made s'mores. We ran the poodles up and down the beach in the surf with the Chuck-it and tennis balls until they were kilt. I grew up on the beach in Winslow Harbor on Bainbridge Island with my cousins and siblings. Hiking your stuff up and down on the beach is GREAT exercise, too!

My roses are spectacular - I promise I will take pitchers for you!

Back to the pie...

We bought into a local 'CSA' - community sustainable agriculture. You pay a flat fee for the 18 weeks, and then each week you get a 'share.' Our weather in Oregon has been, as mentioned previously, really much colder and wetter than is normal, so, understandably, it's not a good year for the CSA. They were a week late starting, and our share was pretty skinchy. They are promising to make it up in future boxes this summer. We bought a share for a family of four and it's not even adequate for a family of two at this point.

One of the things we got was rhubarb, and we also got fresh local strawberries. The strawberries were to DIE for! I looked up a recipe for Strawberry-Rhubarb Pie on the Food Network site. I made pie crust from scratch, and baked the most GORGEOUS pie you ever saw! I sent my husband to 3 stores to find coarse granule sugar for the top - finally the bakery manager at Haggen's sold us a container. The pie was a work of art - I wish I'd taken a pitcher!

SO.... Jay and Connie came over to pick us up, and we showed them the pie. We were all going to come back here after the winery musical thing and eat pie with ice cream.

We walked in the door after the winery event and....

My beautiful pie was upside down on the floor of the kitchen!

Parker. Bad, BAD, evil Parker had pulled the pie off the counter, even though I'd put it where I thought he couldn't reach it.

I didn't cry - Connie humored me out of it.

We took the bottom plastic piece out of a re-usable shopping bag, slid it under the pie, and flipped it over. Connie said, "How dirty can your floors BE?" lol! We took the top that had touched the floor off (cry) and I put in four scoops of vanilla bean ice cream and the four of us stood there with spoons and ate pie. HA!

Note to self: NEVER, EVER LEAVE PARKER UNCRATED AGAIN.