Per Jon's request we got up early yesterday to spend his day at Indpendence Lake, munching on pancakes and sausage and traipsing through the pond looking for wildlife before playing in the splash zone. The weather even cooperated. It was a great morning.
Michigan strawberry season is here. I look forward to these sweet little berries all year long. They're only around for a couple of weeks, and you have to stalk the farmers markets and specialty stores for your chance to get them, because I'm not the only one who knows. Thankfully my mom and dad are expert strawberry hunters and they've been keeping us in strawberries for the past week. Yum.
summer, traditions The problem with falling behind on a journal of any kind, is a reluctance to go forward before catching up on the past. Unfortunately, that means that the more behind one falls, the less likely one is to get caught up, the less likely one is to ever start again. Over the past week-plus of my blog hibernation that something exciting has happened I've thought "Great! I now have something to write about and pictures to share!" quickly followed by "Oh, but I have to catch up first." So how about a quick catch-up post—everything that has happened, or at least everything that I have pictures of (pics or it didn't happen!), and then we'll move on from there.
Journaling the trip
Climbing at the park with HAA (our homeschooling group that meets once a week)
I found this word fun on the floor one morning.
On the first day of September we drove to a Lake Michigan beach to visit with family and soak up some final joys of summer.
We had science over for dinner.
And we partyied in our garden, finding the first signs of fall and ridding the beds of weeds.
And I'm calling that caught up. Tomorrow is the first day of school for many, just another day for us, but I'm sure it will be a great day.
No, I haven't forgotten about my journaling duties, but Calvin and I (and many other hard working volunteers) spent every day for the past week and a half in the basement of our library, preparing for, running, and then cleaning up after our biggest used book sale of the year. Carting around heavy boxes and doing heavy decision making left me too spent to blog at night. I also took a lot fewer pictures, and blogging without pictures gets down right dull. But now we're about to take off on our final summer trip, and that means an explosion of photo ops and journaling ideas.
So how about a run-down of the past almost two weeks first.
Calvin discovered and devoured James Howes's series of stories about Harold, Chester, Howie, and Bunnicula. It's a cute series that was a favorite in our house when Curtis and I were younger. Totally silly with a little mystery/suspense thrown in from a dog's point of view.
Olympics and books. We actually watched TV almost every night for two weeks. It was fun, but now that it has been quiet in the house for a whole week I'm feeling quite glad it's over. And August must be used book sale month—the month when all the local library sale groups cut prices even farther (Ann Arbor even had one weekend when you could have anything that was left for free). We hit up the Ann Arbor bag sale, then spent the next week preparing for our own big sale, which turned out to be a great success.
Dexter Daze was back, our little local fun fair in the center of town. Good local charities selling food, local artists setting up tents, the train ride, the bounce house, all the good stuff. And corn. And our biggest used book sale of the year. Did I mention that we had record breaking sales? I'm quite excited.
Of course, it has barely rained a quarter inch all summer, but when the festival weekend rolls around, full of outdoor activities all over the village, it gets cool and threatens storms and drizzles all weekend long. Don't get me wrong, we needed the water, but couldn't it have picked a better weekend?
And it did clear long enough for us to go outside and take advantage of the cooler weather and wetter ground to roast some s'mores.
And an Opabinia in the driveway. Because...why not, I guess?
summer 
