Good Bye Glorious Summer...

Is it over, really? Is our summer gone, or almost? The kids start school on Tuesday and that seems like the official final end of summer to me.

No more sleeping in (a skill my children did not improve upon at all this summer--the lazy bums).

No more trips to the library or park.

No more impromptu drives out to the beach.

No more playing in the back yard, on the trampoline, on scooters, on the grass or in the trees all...day...long.

No more swimming?

Really?

Now I know we will keep doing all of those fabulous things even with school in session--but summer will be over. Like every year, I am sad to see summer go. Growing up in Maine I can remember seeing the first peeps of red or orange on the trees and feeling a sudden sorrow for the end of summer.

Oddly, summer is only my second favorite season--fall is my all time favorite so it is weird to feel sad about the end of summer when the best season of all is coming next. Weird. Anyway, we have one more day to make the most of our summer. I don't know what we will do yet. (If I were a betting woman I'd put my money on: Sleep until 11:00 and play out in the yard for the rest of the day.) Some how, we'll send summer off in style. For now, here is a little of what we've been doing in order to keep summer captured while preparing for the arrival of autumn:

Completely unstructured and unsupervised play time with siblings: Every morning the kids spring out of bed at about 6:30. Lorien sloshes cereal and milk into bowls and they watch a cartoon or two (or six or seven or twelve, I am still dead to the world and not counting). Then they head outside to play. The games usually involve the kids pretending they are orphaned babies, who are masters of karate, escaping from blood-thirsty-ninja-robot-pirates. These games also involve a whole lot of yelling. We've only received one note of complaint from our neighbors, it was a Sunday morning and the kids had skipped breakfast and cartoons heading straight outside for a screaming-ninja-pirate-butt-kicking-fest.

A side note here: these pictures are from this morning. The kids had already dressed for church when I got the camera out to capture their play. Most mornings they are only wearing underwear--less constrictive for maximum karate kicking power.

PROJECTS! For the last several months I've been sewing for a woman who sells antique linen decor. (Check it out at: www.ludwigaslinen.com/) But I took some time off this summer and got to work on projects of my own. Here is a pict. of the latest, I think they are awesome!

Dealing with Momma's basket-case emotions: I cry about nothing and everything these days. Music is the worst. I've removed all of the Disney music CD's from our car along with the primary practice CD. The songs make me burst into tears too easily--dangerous when you are driving a van load of children to the beach. A few days ago we were listening to a song called (really, I am not making this up) "The Happiest Song I Know" and I started crying like a loved-one passed away: blubbering, sobbing, snot falling out of my nose, hiccoughing, breathing in those short, shallow breaths that get you no where--CRAZY! It is the pregnancy--it had better be.

One more afternoon of swimming: (or if your are me and Clare: One more day of running around the edge of the pool and not getting wet at all.)

Will spent some time swimming with the kids. By "swimming" I mean "throwing the kids in the water to see how well their floaties work". But Will was not the only one tossing his kids around the pool. Uncle David spent a fair amount of time chucking Evan into the water too, and his antics made Will's look down-right-tame.

Let me just tell you what is happening in the photos below: David stands out of the pool with Evan hoisted somewhere about his shoulders. Then David catapults his first-born-child into the air over the water like he is throwing shot-put in the Olympics.

PS Evan seems to LOVE it...

That is it for now! Stay tuned for how we spend our Labor Day--unless we watch TV all day--I will not be blogging about that...