Fruit salad and friends

With the chaos of parenting comes the loss of something precious and yet so overlooked until one enters parent land. I am not talking about the obvious jewels of life... sleep or free time. Rather I am referring to a lesser known fact of parenting: the loss of both free hands. I have been surprised by how little can be done with just one free hand. So when two extra hands arrived from Florida via Delta airlines, we rejoiced in the house. Matt's mom (Mama K) has come bringing with her some extra sleep, free time, and extra hands for Matt and I. We have been so blessed by the grandparents' journeys out west to help out despite the sacrifice of money, time, and long travel involved! Yesterday while Mama K was watching Karis, I took advantage of some free time and hands to relax and enjoy a favorite activity....cooking. I prepared this seven fruit salad. While pregnant, one of my food obsessions was fresh fruit. Living on the west coast has many perks and one of them is limitless amounts of tasty, fresh, and affordable fruit. Yesterday I began to realize I had quite the collection of fruit in my home and could make a decent fruit salad {cantaloupe, raspberries, blueberries, peaches, apples, oranges, strawberries}. Not too bad and when I actually counted how many fruit were in the home I had 9! Wow, that is excessive and I didn't even use all of them (the bananas and pears I deemed a little boring for this festive salad!) After preparing the fruit salad for Mama K and myself I snapped these shots of the dish. This is one thing I love about cooking and preparing food...it is such a sensory experience. Wonderful smells, tastes, textures, and as evidenced here, incredible bursts of color. I think Mama K probably thought it was strange that after laboring over this salad I opted to pull out the camera and snap these shots of it as opposed to devouring it right away!

This summer we have enjoyed hanging out with our small group in less structured activities. Our town hosts bands every Friday night at the downtown park. It has been very relaxing and enjoyable for us to gather down at the park, sit under the canopy of trees, lounge in our camping chairs, and share a meal while listening to great music. This is definitely the way to spend a summer evening! This picture of Karis being held by Matt was taken at the local farmer's market down in San Luis Obispo on Thursday night. I think Karis looks like she is trying to avoid being photographed by the paparazzi (her mama!). Oh well, she better get used to it!

P.S. Special thanks to Abi for the adorable hand-knitted hat and thanks to Tia Alina for the red outfit! We love them both!