The Last Little Bits of Summer

This weekend, we squeezed every bit out of our last hours of Summer.  We are a Summer family.  We love lounging, water, impromptu ice cream outings, late night movies...complete with popcorn and hidden treasures on the bottom of the bowl, sibling slumber parties on palates, sleepovers, magical travels, and eat-when-you're-hungry lunches.  Let's not discount that they have a tendency to finagle sugary, caffeinated beverages...like coke a cola out of the glass bottle in the Summer...because we don't have to go to bed early, after all.

My parents, Honey, and UK came over for dinner.  I made Chicken and Dumplings and Arnold Palmers...served out of Mason Jars with bendy straws, of course.

We sat around the glow of a candle in a jar, surrounded by shells and sand...to soon be replaced by a fire in the fire pit when Fall decides to show it's pumpkin smiled face.

Sister needed a change and went with bangs.  In order to fully commit...I had to self talk my way through disturbing and haunting memories of my mother (and a few times, father) cutting my bangs entirely too short in an obsessive attempt to get them perfectly straight.  When Aiden's seemed a taaaad uneven...I left them ALONE!!

Trout made a trip to the vet, after jumping off of the chair and hurting his leg.  I was sure it was broken.  I had never heard a dog scream like he continually did after landing and then rolling around with his paw dangling in a weird position.  Then he couldn't bare any weight on it and when he would try...he would collapse onto his sweet, little face and whimper.  It was horrible.  But...we just know that as the kids and I prayed on the way to the vet, Jesus took favor on our little Trout and healed that leg right up.  By the time the vet saw him...it became only a sprain.  He had a lot of helpers at his clinic that morning.

After that traumatic event, we went to Yogurt Bear to recover.

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And then sadly, this morning rolled on around, and we officially ended our Summer and started the school year.

As much as I love the Fall...the promise of cooler and crisper weather, pumpkins on the porch, the smell of freshly sharpened pencils and new boxes of crayons, candy corn and caramels, apples, and the crunch on fallen leaves under our feet...I think we were all sad to see this Summer go.

We made a lot of magic during the days of this Summer.  I just have a feeling, it will be one for the books.  You know the kind?  The holder of memories that grown kids sit around the table together and laugh about... year after year...long after Chad and I are gone.  Something about that makes me smile and cry all in one big minute.

After we walked the kids to their classrooms (not the big 5th grader, of course...he went it alone)...Annslee and I came home.  Where Annslee was.....well....she was Annslee.

Happy End of Summer.