"Sum"mer

Because I'm still not fully able to type well, but my husband "suggested" I update my blog and informed me my title was showing up in Comic Sans (yuck!), I will sum up where we've been and what we've been doing:

Wedding in North GA: forced family fun that was actually fun!

Northern Michigan Vacay: AMAZING. 2 full weeks. Relaxing to the max. Oh, yeah and I broke my first bone, my wrist, dominant hand, hence the no blog update.

Broken Wrist Adventures: biking alone is so fun, until your wrist breaks. Multiple trips to "town", had to have 1st anesthesia. Ended up in a cast for 6 weeks, I get it off in 6 days, but who's counting?

Wild Goose Festival: More amazing. 1st family camping trip (minus the toddler), More later.

Summer Ends: We were sad but we were ready.

School Starts: Big kids at the same school for the first time ever. Still loving being able to walk to and from school. Can't believe we have a 3rd and 1st grader! Still getting attitude from the supposed "Monterssori" school. Kids and mama so happy to be back in the routine. Miss M misses her siblings.

And now it's Friday and we've finished our first week of school. The kids are positive and seem to love their teachers which I love. Hoping things stay this positive, it's going to be a great year, I can feel it!

More later, my wrist is throbbing and it's time to go enjoy the pool (or poolside as the case may be) before it closes this weekend. :(

We Like Water

All the pictures I've taken lately involve water in some way. It's been a mostly wet summer and we've been either getting rained on or swimming, so there's really not much else to take pictures of but water.
Today the kids played in the rain because there was really no other way to play outside.

Last week to cool off, they wanted to make body outlines on the wall using the sprayer on the hose. 

Here are the results, pretty cool huh?

And then of course, there's swim team. It was quite a season, full of rain delays and cancelled and rescheduled swim meets because of rain. We were assured this wasn't the norm, but it made an already exhausting swim season even crazier and we are quite happy to have it over with this week. 

The kids really thrived on swim team this year though. H went from *just* being able to swim 25 meters to winning his heat 3 times! A, who was on swim team in Sewanee, became quite proficient in butterfly, a new stroke for her this year. She swam freestyle, backstroke and butterfly at each meet and was consistently on a relay team; either for backstroke in the medley, or as part of the freestyle relay. She is a beautiful swimmer and it was a great thing to watch her thrive in this sport. 

Pretty Perfect Monday

Kids slept in, and thus so did I. Let Mr. Man sleep in even more because he has been working all weekend.  Which is kind of half normal for a priest but being up at 5 both Saturday and Sunday, travelling to a bishop's consecration and back on Saturday, having a very full morning of church Sunday (preaching and celebrating all 3 services), plus an afternoon of minor league baseball game, and a Sunday evening of Superman makes for a very tired Daddy on the day after Father's Day. 

VBS is this week, so I dropped the big kids off and we went to brunch with Baby Girl. Ran a few errands, left Daddy and baby to a failed nap, went to Target, watched the Blind Side (which our kids LOVE), and decided I needed to make the perfect summer dinner. 

So, for dinner we had Tomato, Cucumber, Basil, and Feta Salad with Pesto Chicken Pasta. Our basil is growing like crazy and this batch of pesto plus about a cup chopped for the salad barely made a dent. The cucumbers were from my parent's garden, we've never had success with cucumbers but theirs are going crazy! My mom gave me 5 more today; more cucumber salad, yay! We had gotten a big bag of local peaches at the farmer's market Saturday, so for dessert we had whipped cream and sauteed peaches in butter and brown sugar with a little cinnamon (and a dash of scotch thrown in for the adults). So yum.

After dinner Daddy and the big kids played games while I kept M busy with a basketful of rocks. We love these big smooth rocks from Michigan and keep them on her level to put in a out of the basket to her heart's content. We probably did it for 15 minutes and she kept putting them to her cheek and saying "cold".

Big kids have been sleeping together at night since they don't have to get up early for school and they are currently talking and laughing in bed. So sweet. Baby Girl went down easy after her non-nap and now it's time to read and watch a little HBO on the iPad. 

See, pretty perfect Monday. 

Summer!!!

Summer's in full swing around here. With the first week (and annoying transition/adjustment time of siblings being together constantly) under our belts, I think we're ready to dive in to summer. This week is a bit of the crazy with 3 swim meets (2 rescheduled from storms already), a baseball team party, and VBS, but we're taking it one hour at a time and trying to relax where possible.
Here are the end of Kinder and 2nd grade pics, the differences from the first day of school being mainly longer legs and shorter hair. Ok, we're off to the pool because we just can't seem to stay away!

Good Stuff

We've had some fabulously fun weekends around here lately. Full of family fun and early summer adventure. Last weekend I was fed up seeing everyone else's beach photos on facebook and feeling the NEED for the salt in my hair and sand in my toes, so we took a surprise day trip to the closest beach. We settled on Folly Beach which is hip and old-school all at the same time. I can't wait to go back. The kids were so excited to go on this little adventure and were so good in the car that they didn't even mind the extra 1.5 hours it took to get there due to Memorial Day traffic. They made videos the whole way there and slept the whole way home. They were in the water 93% of the time we were there (which was much warmer than I was expecting) and ate every single snack we brought. 

For dinner we went to a place called Surf Bar that I read good reviews of. Kind of an open-air dive but in a good way with surfboards lining the ceiling and dogs roaming the porch for scraps. They had great burgers and perhaps the best and most unusual cocktail I've ever had called The Painkiller. I have no idea what was in it or how to make it but it was creamy and slightly sweet but also savory and it had nutmeg on top! Yum.

Having the pool open on the weekend just automatically makes the weekends more fun. Usually Sunday afternoons means family rest time but while Daddy and M slept, I took the big kids to the pool. Now that they can both swim independently and well, this means I actually got to relax at the pool! 

I think it's a new Sunday afternoon ritual! 

Alone Time

My parents offered to take Ms. Cutie-pie today so I could have some free-time before summer break hits. I have so far been enjoying gardening, catching up on e-mails and making coffee. I keep feeling like I'm forgetting something though. I'm off to shoe shop (not for me though, boo!), get lunch, and maybe a pedicure or a nap. :) Time is running out quickly though so I'm off.

Photography of late

I've been trying to advance my skills as a photographer, learning about light and aperture and white balance and shutter speed and focal point. It's fun and just when I think I've figured something out, I realize I still have so much to learn.
Here are some favorites from the last few weeks in a variety of lighting, actions, and settings.