Thursday, July 4, 2013

The Colors of Summer

Happy 4th of July! We're currently in the car on our way to High Point State Park for a family camping trip, the first since Riker was born. We're meeting my sister Amanda and her boyfriend Justyn there, and have a campsite right on the lake for the next three days. Eee! I'm so excited.

Yesterday was a busy day powering through my work list so we could get to packing. I stopped for about 10 minutes halfway through the day to make a chopped salad for lunch, and apparently I was in the mood for orange foods.


I filled the bowl with carrots, orange and yellow peppers, orange and yellow heirloom tomatoes, avocado and a chopped up Trader Joe's salmon burger. It was a crunchy and protein packed salad to fuel me through the afternoon.

After work Matt and I ran out to pick up supplies for camping, and while we were out got a call from our friends Chris and Vanessa inviting us over for a little BBQ with their family. The summertime always makes me feel impromptu - something about it staying daylight until 9:00 and the warm weather urging me to stay outside - so we skipped a few of our errands and headed over to their place for dinner.


Hey, it's the start of a holiday weekend. :)


The boys ate stuffed burgers, but Vanessa made a brown sugar pineapple salmon for us girls. They also served roasted potatoes and corn on the cob with cilantro & parsley from Pinterest. 




The corn was amazing, I loved the cilantro!


Chris and Vanessa are just as much of summer ice cream addicts as we are, and love Charlie's in Seaside maybe even more than us, so it didn't take much for them to convince us to take a little drive over to the island for some dessert.


Vanessa is about 8 months pregnant and is looking so adorable. I thoroughly enjoyed a cone of handmade cookies & cream while watching the sunset. Have I mentioned how much I love summer? 


Since we took a little BBQ and ice cream detour, we ended up staying up pretty late last night packing and prepping food for camping. It was worth it, though. I put on my Biggie Pandora station and got to work in the kitchen while Matt loaded up our gear. Within an hour I had a big spread of veggies and fruits to take with us for the weekend, including quinoa salad, veggies & hummus, fruit salad, and chopped butternut squash to cook over the fire.


I love all those colors! I fully plan on having some typical camping fare, but wanted to have a lot of healthy foods with us as well. I figured if all the veggies and fruits were chopped and ready to go, we'd be much more likely to pick healthy snacks than some of the junk food that will surely be lying around, at least during the day...I mean, you can't go camping without s'mores and campfire toast.






By 12:30 I was exhausted! Thankfully Riker let us sleep in until 8 am this morning. As soon as he woke up, we threw last minute items together and got on our way. I made us fresh peach and yogurt parfaits for the road so we didn't have to waste time with breakfast at home.


And with that, we're just about to pull into the campground. Trees, water and big sky, hear we come. Have a great holiday weekend!

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