Friday Night Photos

It's Friday night--my favorite! I've had a very busy day today, so I'm looking forward to a relaxing evening. I have kind of a lot of photos from this week, but not much of a common theme--a big mishmash of stuff.

Peppers were on sale at Kroger when I went grocery shopping and I love bell peppers! I may have gone a little overboard by buying seven peppers, but they looked so good. This morning, I decided to make a spread of stuff for fajitas/burritos/burrito bowls. I always love how pretty the different colors of bell peppers look when they come together:

It was kind of funny while I was slicing the peppers because Eli came into the kitchen and told me how sore his thumbs were from prepping peppers at Qdoba (where he works). He said they cut the peppers a little differently than I do (I hold the pepper upright and slice all of the sides off, then throw away the core and cut into strips). 

At Qdoba, they use their thumb to punch out the stem (push on it straight down until the stem snaps and falls down into the pepper). Then they split the pepper in half with their hands and use some sort of machine to push down on the pepper halves, which slices them in one push. Eli said he preps about 200 peppers(!) in the mornings at work. I tried doing just two peppers by punching in the stem with my thumb and it hurt--I can't even imagine doing 200. Something to keep in mind when deciding how much to leave as a tip ;) 

Anyway, I made a ton of food today (basically the entire menu of Qdoba, haha): both brown and white cilantro-lime rice, carne asada and marinated chicken, peppers and onions sautéed with homemade fajita seasoning, black beans, corn, guacamole, sour cream, cheese, and salsa. I pretty much spent the entire morning and afternoon in the kitchen prepping food. (Burrito bowls are perfect for vegans and meat-eaters alike; I made a delicious vegan burrito bowl with just the rice, peppers and onions, black beans, corn, guacamole, and salsa.)

Eli had his girlfriend over and my parents came over for dinner as well, so it was worth the effort. (It drives me crazy when I spend time making dinner and then nobody is here to eat! Teens are totally unpredictable.)

Speaking of guacamole, I love this meme that I found this week:

I can't even remember what I wrote about already this week, so hopefully it's not redundant. We went to my parents' house for the 4th, and Brian, Becky, Luke and Riley were there. I always love seeing the kiddos!

Luke is very into Minecraft right now, which reminds me of when my kids were little. They LOVED Minecraft! I didn't know it was still "a thing". It was cute listening to Luke talk about it because Noah and Eli knew exactly what he was referring to. I, of course, nodded along like I was in the know as well.

This was adorable, even though the picture is bad (I was taking it from the house with my cell phone, so this was the best I could do). I looked up and saw Luke pushing a stroller with Riley's doll in it. I was thinking how sweet it was, and then right after this picture he broke into a run, with the stroller bouncing all over the place and the baby doll barely staying inside. Haha!

Riley was on the tire swing and Brian was lying on the ground. She ran and jumped, letting the swing fall back right over Brian--so he was trying to get a picture of her from his perspective while she was swinging right over him. I don't know if you can tell, but there is an incline in the yard there, so when the swing came back, it went right over Brian. I just thought it was a cute moment!

Jerry and I went to a local bar to play Keno last weekend, which was fun. We hadn't played Keno in SO long--since before the pandemic for sure. We didn't play it frequently before that (maybe 3-4 times a year) but it was always fun and I was happy to get to play again! (That's a Heineken 0.0, if you're wondering; I still don't drink.)

I noticed this sign and I liked it for some reason--it's true! People want good, cheap, and fast when it comes to food, but I don't know of any place that can do all three.

This is a weird quirk of Duck's that I don't think I've written about before. Duck watches me while I blog. And I don't mean that he just glances at me once in a while. I like to sit in the corner of the sectional couch while I write and Duck sits on the floor right in front of me and just STARES. It is the weirdest thing! When I took this picture yesterday, he'd already been sitting there for probably an hour. Then I took a few more pictures over the course of a couple of hours--where you can see from the timestamp that he hasn't moved.

Sometimes he'll fall asleep while sitting there like that. I always feel so bad for him! I would love to play with him all day, but yesterday I spent literally the entire day working on my blog post. I usually end up making paper balls to throw for him while I work (he plays fetch).

Duck needs constant stimulation, where the other cats are content to sleep most of the day. I love this about Duck, but I always feel bad when I'm not able to keep him occupied. I was heading out to the garage a few days ago and he clearly wanted to talk (he meows like he's having a conversation with me) and he was following me around.

I was desperate to distract him so I could go outside without feeling too bad, so I moved around a few toys and I made a little fort with the scratcher. Chick even got up from his nap to check it out! It's so funny how moving a few things around is SO fascinating to cats.

I'd started by just flipping the nail scratcher on its side and putting some toys around. That didn't seem like it would last long enough, so I made the fort. I'm a sucker.

I ended up leaving it like that for a couple of days because the cats loved playing in it. After that, however, Chick and Duck have been practically glued to the window. There are still a few fish flies around, which just sit on the window screen until they die; the birds fly up to the window to grab one, and Duck and Chick go crazy for the birds. Duck always seems to forget about the window and he crashes into it.

I think it's so interesting that they have NO interest in squirrels, who come right up to the door for walnuts. They must think of them as other pets because we interact with them. The birds, though, are the cats' favorite entertainment.

Meanwhile, in Illinois and northern Michigan, Joey is having the time of his life on his very own vacation! When Noah and Eli drove to Jeanie and Shawn's property up north, they brought Joey and then left him there with Jeanie and Shawn. Remy, their elderly basset hound, passed away recently and her other basset was feeling a little lonely; since Joey is an angel-dog (he really is a GOOD DOG), Jeanie asked if he could stay with her for a while.

So, during the week, he gets to stay at Jeanie's house with Bentley (his basset cousin); and then on the weekends, they go up north. He's going to stay until the end of this month. It's been SO weird not having him at home! There have been several times where I've thought, "It's so nice out--I'm going to take Joey for a walk... oh, wait." I'm 100% sure he's having a blast, though, and I'm not too certain he's going to want to come home! (I'm going to write a post about his vacation once he gets home so we can see his adventures, haha.)

Here are few pictures so far...

Relaxing with Shawn. Clearly, Bentley is as thrilled as Joey about the long visit ;)

Might as well take a ride on the side-by-side! (Look how spoiled they are with their dog bed on the side-by-side)

And follow it with a nice nap by the fire

I think Joey's going to come home very spoiled and want to make this an annual vacation!

Finally, here is a sneak peak at tomorrow's post about my latest vegan cooking adventure...

And that's all I've got. Have a great weekend! xo