burgers

It is now that time of the year again.

All the Robbins (yes, there are now 18 of us) - get together and have a Burger Cook-off to celebrate the 4th of July and further illustrate our love of competition.

Lots of planning, 

preparation,

and grilling went into it.

To make the grilling portion more fair this year we had two gas grills and one charcoal grill all going at the same time to accommodate the 27 burgers 

and 12 sliders.

The burgers were "plated" (a term referring to assembling the grilled patty with all it's delicious accouterments and sandwiching it inside some sort of bun/roll), 

secured with toothpicks and cut into quarters.

Then carefully laid out on each place mat.

Our tasting palate.

Let the tasting and judging commence.

We carefully savored a bite of each burger quarter on our place mats and then wrote comments and assigned a 1-5 score.  (Personally, I think I made the right move this year by not entering a burger - I helped my oldest niece with her sliders and then reaped the benefits of everyone else's hard work.)

Okay, maybe we stuffed our faces a little bit.

And the results are in....

Tim's "Jalapeno Popper Burger" won first place!  

We finished the night with some sparklers

and fireworks.

Happy 4th of July!

harvest

The warm weather has been good to our tomato plants. Tonight we had our first BIG harvest!
(By the way, some of our tomato plants are growing out of control at 5 feet high and counting.)



As soon as we get them off the vine, Hannah cannot wait to eat them!

Our favorite variety is the sungold tomato plants (they are small & orange and taste like candy) - but we also have Roma, yellow pear and some we can't remember what they are. :)

"Take a picture of mine, mommy!"

photography

Photography is my most enduring hobby.

I love seeing what I can capture through my lens. 

My joy of photography has had two major milestones:

1. When I turned 21 my mom gave me my first SLR (film) camera and I took a photography course.

2. When Hannah was born and I suddenly had a constant subject to photograph.

And recently a new milestone - my first formal photo shoot.  Some dear friends of ours have a little boy who is just three weeks younger than Peter.  To celebrate his first birthday we did a photo shoot.

 Here are some of my favorites from that day.

Thanks Andrew for being a willing and smiley subject!

yes

I've been conscious recently of wanting to say yes to Hannah more than I say no. (I find it all to easy to slip into the mode where I say no to everything she asks and forget to embrace her desires and spontaneity.)

Yesterday she wanted to make pink cupcakes (of course).
And I decided to say Yes!

Unfortunately I could not find our food coloring at the right moment - so we had white cupcakes with pink sprinkles instead.



She definitely did not mind and loved the experience...

savoring every last crumb of her post-dinner cupcake.

smile II

One more reason to smile today...

Matt is making one of his delicious, double layer chocolate cakes with ganache frosting right now.

I can't wait to eat it!

smile

This picture makes me smile. 

It captures Peter so well. 

He loves eating. 

He loves standing. 

He loves not wearing any clothes.

(changing his diaper is quite a battle right now)

And on yet another rainy June day - we need some reasons to smile!

first steps

Last night when Matt came home from work I told him that Peter was going to start walking any day now.
And literally five minutes later this happened: