FINALLY. Annalie had only been asking to make lemonade about twelve times a day for the past week. Also, I wanted to try to make some before my mom left, and today was her last day here.

Over the past few days as we unpacked the kitchen boxes we found the juicer and knives and other necessary implements. Troy and I bought the lemonade carafe on clearance a couple of days ago. And today we went to the store and bought a bag of sugar (after I remembered that I had given my sugar away before we moved and therefore was never going to find it in any of the boxes in my kitchen). We finally had everything we needed.

We measured sugar and water into a pan to make simple syrup, because I’d never made lemonade that way and wanted to try it. While that was cooking, we started slicing and juicing the lemons. Annalie had fun trying to squeeze the juice out of the first couple of lemons, but after the fourth or fifth lemon she was slumped on the table, complaining that making lemonade was boooooriiiing.

Two lemons later, I had enough juice and poured it into the carafe. Then I asked Annalie if she wanted to add the water to the carafe all by herself, and she perked right up and decided making lemonade was SO FUN! She concentrated hard and got every drop of water in the carafe without spilling. She was quite proud of herself.

Meanwhile, the sugar had dissolved in the boiling water and I had turned the heat off under the pan to let the syrup cool a bit. We added that to the lemon-juice mixture and Annalie stirred it all up. We poured a tiny bit into glasses for a taste test and agreed it needed to be just a touch sweeter. Finally, it was perfect.

Yum! Is there anything better on a summer day than homemade lemonade? Well, probably. But homemade lemonade is pretty darn good!

We’re glad you got to make lemonade with us before you went home, Mom! Thanks for all your help over the past weeks. We don’t know what we would have done without you.

Yes, I realize that this post is rather similar to SAJ’s lemonade-making post from a few days ago. Sorry if you got déjà vu reading it!