He likes to see all the islands, so island-hopping he goes

HAPPY WEEKEND!

We're excitedly gearing up here for a weeklong trip to the San Juan Islands, to celebrate my parents' (40th) anniversary. We're looking forward to exploring a new place and spending some time around trees!

While letting the chickens out yesterday, I noticed that a Meadowlark

had built a nest under the eave of the chicken coop - it appears to

be made of polyester stuffing and feathers and holds 3 beautiful little eggs

Something delicious: I got super excited about these when I read the article at my parents' house a couple of weeks ago. I don't know about pretzel dogs or hot pockets, but a good soft pretzel is a beautiful thing. I'll bet Silas would like them too.

Something neat: This is a story about how one of my dearest college friends, and incidentally one of the most brilliant women I know, runs a creative, inspirational, and (deservedly) very popular business. She has worked amazingly hard to create something truly special and beloved, and I admire her immensely.

Something to read: This is a totally fascinating article about studies into how microbes and their colonies in our bodies benefit our daily lives, specifically those in our gut (sidenote: I love that gut is the scientific term for our digestive system). He especially focuses on this currently running study, sampling gut microbiota around the country, with the hopes of eventually drawing correlations between these colonies and our overall health. Such, such interesting ideas and so much we don't yet know.

Something to make: We got our first strawberries this week (yippee!) and I've got a batch of this underway in the fridge. I have at least three other strawberry jams I'd like to try this year - hooray for the onset of jam season!

Chocolate will cure most of what ails ya