People, the constant reiteration of our Summer Rules may be sinking in, underscoring and bolstering my hope that if you repeat something consistently enough over a long enough period of time, kids might actually ingest and process your message. The boys woke up at some time but did not wake me up. Instead they played together quietly, and I woke up on my own at.... 7:00 AM!

Unreal. If it happens again tomorrow, I'll let me hopefulness rise another notch because really, I don't want to get ahead of myself.

Despite the light rain, we got dressed for the farmers market -rain boots, rain coats, the works- and as we headed outside, the sky opened and it really started to pour. Onward ho, small Team of Adventure. We had a blast, I shopped while the kids raced leaves down the rivers of water gushing along the sides of the (closed-off for the market) street, and we returned home with all manner of goodies: beets, beans, berries, rhubarb, carrots and more. Isn't this beet charming in its confusion?

T was here when we got back, and my trio of man-boys wrestled and fought as Jedis and Siths before settling down to watch a MythBusters: Duct Tape Grand Canyon. Immediately following this, Jack, inspired by Jamie's and Adam's duct tape and bubble wrap boats, drew up blueprints for his own vessel. I told him that if he actually did the measurements and was thoughtful about the construction, we could possibly buy the materials needed to make a scale model of his craft. He spent a full hour on his plans, and I only stepped in once, to suggest that his mast not be 7 feet tall when his boat was only 3 feet long. Back to the drawing board.

Meanwhile, I made this delicious braise of carrots, baby leeks, beans and tomatoes. Have I mentioned how seriously obsessed I am with my Lodge skillet? That thing is awesome!

Concurrently, I took my new mini-pie pan for a test run. It makes four 4" pies in one pan (removable bottoms), and since we are such a serious pie family but probably shouldn't always eat a pie in 36 hours (as if usually the norm), I thought smaller options might be wise. One peach, two straw-rhubarb: cute, eh? Unfortunately, what I've known to be true for some time but have been loathe to admit out loud, my beloved pie crust recipe isn't the best for smaller items like this, mostly because it does not like to be rolled out more than once or twice. Because you have to keep rolling and cutting to make multiple small crusts, it's just not as easy (or fun) to work with in this way, so I might have to find an alternative for future minis.

I do love a good cake, but I will tell you that I have come around to concur with Tom's opinion that pies are hard to beat, and probably, for the most part, consistently better than their cakey kin. It is SO common to have a disappointing cake: dry, tasteless, just overall underwhelming. But pies? Well, they're a good thing. There's a reason all nine pies we had in lieu of a groom's cake went long before one layer of our cake...