Bucket list kind of a day!

Remember our summer bucket list? Well my husband doesn't work on Fridays in the summer and we had nothing going today and I thought it was a perfect day to knock a bunch of those off the list in one big sweep.  So I scoured through the list and looked for some things we could do that would involve keeping cool - since it was a mere 106deg outside today! The winners were:

Wash the car

 Girls are "helping" - aka fighting over control of the hose      My daughter decided her pink car needed a car wash too!

Slip and slide

 106deg outside my oldest went down it one time and because it was in the shade she decided it was "too freezing"

 The neighbor boy and my youngest had fun though! Glad they enjoyed it because it took about 1.5hr they had to wait while the air compressor blew it up. 

Pizza night

In the winter we often will have pizza and family movie night.  I was trying to think of what to make for dinner because it is too hot to cook. Our house is luxuriously cool with the air conditioning and I didn't want to have to turn on the oven and mess with that. So I thought, what if we did pizza night but grilled the pizzas and kept the heat out where it belongs.  Then I thought what if we did a couple different flavors.  Then I thought what if I used something for the crust that wasn't as big and it came to me like an epiphany of epic proportions...Naan!

Comes in a two pack, big enough and yet small enough, garlic flavored and pizza crust consistency! So the dream was born for four different pizzas.  A little something for everyone.  For the hubs...

Pepper Meatball Pizza

Layered marinara, peppers from our garden, meatballs chopped, and topped with mozzarella - sausage and peppers is his favorite and the poor guy rarely gets it so this is a nice way to do pizza if everyone likes different toppings! 

Bruschetta Pizza

 Layer pesto and basil leaves. Then I roasted some cherry tomatoes with garlic in a pan (would have oven roasted them but we were trying to avoid the oven remember!) then I bought tomato basil mozzarella and sliced it on top. I use this:

I use this for my bruscetta burgers too. I should really share that one with you sometime too! Yummo.

Chicken Broccoli Olive White Pizza

Layer goat cheese, broccoli, grilled chicken, and olives

 Top with Mozzarella

Thai Chicken Pizza

 Start by drizzling with peanut sauce, this is the brand I usually use, it's spicy though. I do have a recipe for homemade sauce which is more kid-friendly but I was going with easy. They can eat one of the other pizzas!

 Then I layered grilled chicken, shredded carrot, green onion, cilantro and peanuts, and some more peanut sauce...

...and topped with a little cheese.

Here are the four pizzas on their way out to the grill. You will note the Bruschetta pizzas cheese was melting at room temperature! Did I mention it is 106deg outside!? My husband was able to fit all four on the grill at once. He had our gas grill on low and they only took about 7-10 min to warm and melt.  One of the pizzas got a little crispy on the bottom but otherwise this worked great.  He has a big grilling spatula that easily transferred them.  I tried a little piece of 3 out of 4 of them. They were all great I thought!  We both said it would be a super fun party idea to have a "pizza" bar because they make a really good size I probably ate the equivalent of 1/2 so at a party you could find a buddy who wanted the same type and split it.  We will definitely be doing this again! So yummy!

Family movie night

With all the activities we didn't have time for a feature length film so we went with a shorter one on Netflix.  In the end it was my oldest - the die hard TV fan watching. I was working on this next to her, and the smallest of the small ones was "helping" daddy do the dishes (isn't my husband awesome, he grills and does the dishes!)

Ice cream sundaes

 We laid it all out and invited our little buddy over to join us and they could choose from three types of ice cream (they all chose superman) chocolate, caramel, peanuts, bananas, banana chips, marshmallows, whipped cream and cherries. What do you think they chose? Everything.

Sugar!!!! My youngest hardly ate any! She is like her dad and can only handle sweets in moderation and with a glass of milk to wash them down.  Why didn't I get that problem?

Aren't they cute!?

last but not least....

Driveway fireworks

My husband wished I had let him do these....

They are legal after all, he pleaded.  He said it was totally unfair when he was in "the tent" there were a bunch of approx 18 year old unattached males with arm loads of dangerous explosives.  But my sweet little father of two proudly gave us a show of these...

And we were thrilled! I like my man with all his fingers and toes!

Whew a long full family summer day. Straight up to bed for the kiddos after 10 pm! But that is what summer is all about.  We had a lot of fun. I feel blessed to spend some time with neighbor kids today and even got to talk to his mom a bit.  If we can show God's love to neighbors with ice cream, fireworks, and slip and slides isn't that a blessing!? I hope you are all having as much fun as we are, not getting too hot in this heat and taking time to enjoy the slow summer days. Feels good to have crossed a few things off the old bucket list. Wonder what tomorrow will bring....