Soaking Up These Final Weeks of Summer

Here we are in August already with only weeks until the new school year begins.  We are grabbing the remaining bit of summer break and holding on to it for as long as we can.

After finishing up a week of robotics camp and a trip to the public library, we tried out a new park this weekend and had yet another picnic (I'm getting my money's worth out of this new picnic tablecloth.)

From ages 6-14, they all actually ate and played together, which is no small accomplishment these days.

Our youngest insisted it was her American Girl doll's birthday, so she had to come along and receive presents and be wished a Happy Birthday.  She was once Felicity, but since her haircut, I think she looks like a hybrid of Felicity and our 6 year old.

After the park picnic and playground, we tried out a different swimming pool.

It was great fun for the children since our pool doesn't have water slides and jungle gyms.  It was great for me since I'm not responsible for cleaning it.

Our weekend continued with our teenage daughter at a candy molding class and then taking over my kitchen as she prepares a mega-cake for the fair.  In between, my youngest and I tried our hands at making crafts from an old issue of an American Girl magazine.

We were trying to make edible bunny slippers out of marshmallows, frosting, and colored sugar.  This was a sticky project, and we didn't have certain candies that would have made it easier.  So they turned out looking like this, but as you can see, she thought they were fantastic.

My little ones have also been picking many flowers from our gardens and beds and making bouquets.  I love the late summer flowers in bloom, and since these are all perennials, I don't have to do anything but admire them.

I'm sad to say that it took me this long, but for the first time all summer, last evening I finally just lay on the ground and gazed at the sky like I used to when I was a child.

I didn't think about the chores I had left to do or getting the children ready for bed.

  I listened...and heard the locusts in the trees and my husband and children laughing in the pool.  I smelled the grass under my back and the apple mint growing beside me.  I felt the evening breeze coming down off the mountain and the claws of one of our cats kneading my stomach as he tried to get comfortable on me.  I watched the bugs, birds, and bats fly overhead as the sun finished setting.

And I wondered if years from now, when our children come home to visit with their little ones, this is how they will remember their summers growing up at this farmhouse in the mountains.