It Looks Like Our Summer Has Come to an End

 

All of our children will be returning to school this week, so our summer has officially come to an end.  Some of us are excited, some are nervous, some are dreading it.  I'm a bit of all three.  I pulled out the old chalkboard and drew a new picture to honor this return to formal education.

 

I decided to grill out for dinner and finish off the summer with traditional summer foods one more time.  My husband had the same idea, and we both returned from the store and a local Amish farm with tons of sweet corn.  I'm afraid we'll be having it nearly every day this week.

 

We grilled a variety of chicken sausages, had the corn-on-the-cob, fresh local cantaloupe, and my creamy potato salad made with both red and purple potatoes.  My potato salad recipe can be found in my blog archives  here.

 

My children picked a few black eyed susan, stems from the butterfly bush, and one small hydrangea bloom for inside the kitchen.

 

And they cut a few droopy sunflowers and jerusalem artichoke flowers for the picnic table out back.  It turned out to be too hot and buggy to sit outside anyway.

 

I let our 7 year-old take the pictures on the patio, and she's obviously been watching me this past year take pics for this blog because I'm pretty sure she was standing on the picnic table to get some of these.  And she took a lot.

 

For dessert I went retro and made these jello parfaits in my childhood parfait glasses.

 

I layered cool whip, peach jello, more cool whip, and blueberry pomegranate jello in these cups.  They never had flavors like that back in the seventies when I was a girl.

 

We shared dinner with the proud parents of our now 5 week-old grandson, and I couldn't resist giving his new mama this sign we found at Kohl's today.   I love it.

Wishing all my readers a fantastic new school year.