And summer begins!

This month is our 5 year anniversary and Chris' parents gave us our gift this week.  A brand new barbecue grill!! The funny story is kind of a long story, but truthfully, they got the brand new one for themselves.  They moved into a different house a little over a year ago and their back deck is a lot smaller then they were used to. So they planned on buying a new smaller grill for themselves to use in the smaller space, and give us their old one.  But alas, the new one arrived and its like 3 inches bigger than the one they already had. Of course!  But its good for us cuz we got the new one.  

And the fun of putting together the new one! That was sarcasm by the way...

I don't have a good history with putting grills together.  My mom got my dad one when I was in my teens for their anniversary and my best friend Kelly and I tried to put it together as a surprise.  The Sears guy said it would take like 20 minutes with two people.  3 hours later we gave up, plopped the cover on it, and told Dad part of the surprise was that he had to put it together too. Poor guy. 

So I had managed to fit this box in our car and we maneuvered it back out again and got to work unpacking all the little pieces and screws.  Lots and lots of screws. 

But Chris was so excited to put ours together and grill something in our own home for the very first time. It took not quite an hour to put it together.  And that's only cuz I had a fake blonde moment and screwed a whole section together backwards.  We flipped it upright and Chris was like: "Uh, Shaina...Do you see what's wrong with this picture?" It seemed correct when it was upside down...

Picture proof: 

So we had a good laugh about that.  But all in all, we're a pretty good put-things-together team.  And we had fun.  

Then it was time to officially welcome in summer and grill up some burgers and brats.  You should see how happy this makes Chris.  He wants to grill everything now. 

I'm thinking "grill as often as possible" will be added to our Summer Manifesto.  Post all about that coming soon! 

What do you do to "welcome summer"? 

Do you have any good grilling recipes or secrets to share?