Slices of Life

We arrived home Saturday night and I'm busy playing catch up this week. We had a lovely vacation -- of course not every moment was perfect. Alec was fighting off a cold most of the week, my husband and I had some pesky admin/tax stuff to deal with that cropped up late in the afternoon the day before we were leaving so that came with us, we learned that Alec was accused of writing his final paper using AI and got a zero (despite not having used AI at all-- but how do you prove that?!).. luckily his grades are super high so even with the zero he walked away with a B but what a disappointment! We consoled ourselves with beautiful scenery, delicious food, and once in a lifetime types of hikes. My recaps will start tomorrow-- all of the posts are very photo heavy between both mine and Evan's photos.    How was your week? Being in a different time zone kind of threw off my blogging schedule but I decided to just not worry about it. I will eventually get around to visiting everything...

I've always wanted to write one of these fun "by the numbers" wrap up of a vacation but usually blank on what numbers/facts to include-- but not this time!    8-- total days we were gone  7-- total nights we were gone  4- flights taken to and from Utah; Providence to Midway, Midway to Salt Lake City, then the same flights in reverse  1,253- total number of miles we drove in Utah with our car rental 5-- National Parks visited (Zion, Bryce Canyon, Capitol Reef, Arches, & Canyonlands)  2-- State parks visited (Dead Horse Point & Red Canyon) 4-- trips to the grocery store 0-- number of ice cream dishes/cones I ate   7-- Number of restaurants we tried for the first time  7-- Number of restaurants we'd go back to a second time! The food was fantastic everywhere we went 2-- Number of times we had to stop for cows IN the road 646-- Total number of photos Evan and I took combined (not counting those blurry or duplicate/deleted ones)  1- T...

It's the second Monday and time for Share Our Lives. The monthly link up where we share snippets of our lives. This month we're talking about our go to lunches on the go. I really, really struggled with this one. Since my kids were homeschooled I pretty much never packed lunches for them and since I haven't worked outside the home since my oldest was in second grade I have rarely packed a lunch for myself either.  I finally decided to show what I typically pack for snacks/lunch when we go out hiking. Now, most of the time we take shorter 3 or 4 hour hikes and end early enough that we can be back at the car and either home for lunch or stop to each lunch out somewhere. But when we do longer hikes we have to pack food and snacks to keep us fueled up. My favorite "go to" lunch is fruit and granola. I pack them in our reusable containers with a little sandwich baggie of granola and a spoon. You have to keep the granola separate until ready to eat or it will absorb the...

My husband makes pulled pork fairly frequently.  I started making pulled pork in the crock pot years ago and we've since tried a few different recipes (like this cranberry BBQ pulled pork ) but it wasn't something I thought about very often.  All that changed when my husband got a smoker as an early Father's day gift a couple of years ago!   Now, I feel like we have been eating pulled pork at least a few times a month (and when I say we I really mean they as I hardly ever eat any at all because I don't like pork or smoked meats).  He'll usually smoke up a few pork butts and shred them both then we eat some for dinner and sort the rest into a couple of freezer portions for easy, nearly ready-made weeknight dinners.  1. Pulled pork sandwiches -- The simplest way to serve pulled pork; everyone just piles the pork and cheese (perhaps coleslaw) on a bun.   2. Pulled pork rice bowls -- I cook up some white rice and veggies and everyone portions out th...