Sizzlin' Summertime

As the temperatures have risen in Kansas City, our social life has heated up as well. Over the past few weeks we have had several friends come and spend some time hanging out with us.  With having so many friends visiting us, the fun quotient around our apartment jumped drastically.  However, after everyone left, Jules and I (Alex) realized how exhausting it can be to have so much fun and we needed a few days to recuperate.  We also noticed that our living room seems huge without an air mattress on the floor, and it is easier to share a bathroom between the two of us instead of four females.   

Our friend Hillary stayed with us off and on over the course of several weeks when she made some other side trips.  She is taking online classes this summer and thought our apartment was a great place for some solitary confinement so she would actually get her homework done.  After a long week of work (3 ½ days) for Jules, and a week of classes and homework for myself and Hillary, we decided to go out on the town one Saturday evening.  Jules has wanted to eat at a place called the Chartreuse Caboose for a few months, so we finally checked it out.  We pulled into the parking lot at 6:00 on a Saturday night, and it was completely empty—maybe this isn’t the best sign.  The specialty was Philly cheese steaks and the décor was train themed which was pretty interesting.  After dinner we went shopping—this is a given when girls get together.  For dessert we got some frozen custard.  Nothing says summer like getting a cool treat after a hot day. 

For Jules, she was definitely questioning the food quality when she woke up Sunday with nausea and vomiting.  Nothing beats welcoming in a new week with the 24 hour flu.  Thankfully, her dad was wonderful and brought over an emergency supply of nausea meds she has not had to rely on since she was sick with the flu while in Seattle.  The upside to this is that she was able to take a sick day and have another shortened 3-day work week. 

Hillary and Alex have a tradition of going on a bike ride every summer.  We went out to Shawnee Mission Park to ride on one of my favorite trails.  It was an incredible summer evening, and we had an amazing ride.  The trail wasn’t too crowded, and it was a cooler evening.  We saw probably a dozen deer.  Johnson County deer are smaller than normal and don’t seem to mind people at all.  One of the highlights during this ride was seeing two dads out on the trail running with two kids on bikes and another in a stroller.  We thought these dads deserve some big bonus points.  The little girl asked for a drink so the dad squirted a water bottle in her mouth without stopping while she was biking and he was running—this is pretty hard core if you can’t even stop for a water break.  We overheard the dad telling the little girl “Hey, we got to keep rolling”—definitely a dad statement. 

Later on that week, our friend Deloris came while Hillary was staying with us.  To celebrate her arrival, Alex’s last day working at the indoor pool as a lifeguard, and summer in general we headed to Sonic for their summer special of half price shakes after 8pm.  Nothing is better than Sonic shakes and girl chat on a summer evening (it is also an added bonus that none of my friends like eating cherries which topped their shakes, so I got to enjoy multiple cherries on my shake.)

On Friday we attended A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Shakespeare in the Park to celebrate Jules’ birthday.  We packed a picnic of our favorite finger foods— pigs in a blanket, a veggie tray, and some fresh guacamole and chips.  We also felt very sophisticated as we pulled out our wine glasses- that’s right, we even packed some fine china for our picnic—and enjoyed some sparkling pink lemonade.  We took a small break in our picnic to do some people watching, which was pretty entertaining.  Our next course was mini fruit pizzas.  These looked incredible and tasted even better.  The ladies sitting next to us were pretty impressed and even asked for the recipe.  The play was a lot of fun—thankfully this year it was a comedy instead of a history or tragedy like it has been in the past.  During intermission we broke out our final surprise—caramel brownies.  (Side note: In the past the only time Hillary will make these brownies is for a treat after we run a half marathon.  It was very special to eat these brownies without having to go on a 13 mile run first.) 

The next morning we headed out to the Overland Park Arboretum.  We hiked the trails for awhile and tromped around the gardens.  The most threatening animal we saw in the wilderness of the arboretum was a rather large snapping turtle.  We never saw the body, but its head alone made it look menacing.  One parent we saw was cautioning his son about the large “piranhas” in the pond.  After this we couldn’t convince Hillary to stick her toes in the water—probably the large turtle was her reason for declining this invitation. For lunch we enjoyed picnic reruns which was great—there is just something special about eating outdoors, and all food tastes better—even leftovers.

That afternoon we decided to beat the heat with some shopping.  We went to the local thrift stores and set a $5 dollar budget with which everyone had to find an outfit for someone else to wear to dinner that evening.  We discovered the Jules has a real talent for picking out hideous dresses.  We found some great outfits and had several great laughs.  That evening we “dressed up” for our dinner (which happened to be take-out from the BBQ place down the street).  To top off the night, we had a girls’ movie night and watched New in Town and We Bought a Zoo—you have to love movies with guys in flannel and northern accents and anything with Matt Damon (this may be solely Alex’s opinion). 

Alas, all good things must come to an end, even this blog entry.