Us vs. Summer

As school let out and the gaping hole of summer begged to be filled, we made plans with Erik's cousins to meet up at the zoo. We pulled up and noticed crowds of people waiting outside and a news van. Thinking we were going to be jostling half the world to see a few animals, we instead discovered that one of the zoo's large cats had escaped and was wandering around. With no reassurances of the zoo opening soon, we decamped and enjoyed ourselves at the local aviary instead. The same aviary that we lived a few blocks from for 4 years and never visited. Oh well. I think we could have done anything with Dan and Kate and it would have been the best day of our kid's lives.

A work party with a balloon artist, face painting, caricaturists, old fashioned games, and enough corn on the cob to satisfy even Kate. The kids are already asking when the next work party will be.

When the strawberries were ripe on my uncle's farm, we trekked up to Cache Valley to see family and do a little harvesting. Turns out that straddling rows of strawberry plants is a lot different at 30 and 5 months pregnant than when I worked there at 15. Here Sam is hanging out with MY cousin. Yeah, when your mom has 13 siblings, the gap in cousin ages is pretty extreme. What with livestock, irrigation ditches, and the freedom of roaming several acres, my kids were pretty jealous of the farm life by the end of the day.

Nibbling at Grandma's much smaller strawberry patch

The results of 3 cases of strawberries (minus the other half that I made the day before). I think we are set for the apocalypse, as long as our freezer doesn't lose power.

 

I'm so glad that we have no room in our yard for a trampoline. Except when I see moments of pure joy like this.

Getting ready for a little boating. We have been multiple times this summer, and Kate now thinks herself quite the expert. She knowledgeably points out every boat we pass on the road and says cockily, "WE go boating..."

 

Reminiscent of my "take your child to work" days, Nana took Sam and Morgan with her on a work-sponsored service project. They were delighted with the matching T-shirts, lunch at McDonalds, and "Finding Dory" in the afternoon. Come to think of it, that's a lot different than how my days at work with my dad went.

Here you can see Sam and Morgan returning from morning swim lessons and preparation for princess camp right after. I scheduled a lot of summer camps and lessons in the hope of staying busy and happy and away from the TV, but I didn't plan on being sick my entire pregnancy. As long as I take medicine every 2 or 3 days, we get through it with minimal vomiting but heavy doses of irritation and impatience.

I signed Sam up for dance camp when I enrolled Morgan, thinking what the heck - he always wants to do what Morgan does anyway. He was the prince to 3 little princesses, and flirted with them indiscriminately. The final performance exhibited more exuberance than grace, but hey, it was another week of summer filled with something new and interesting. An unexpected consequence of this whimsical scheduling has been the calls from the dance studio ever since, hoping to sign Sam up for the rest of his life. Always in need of male dancers, they have tried diligently to convince me of how beneficial dance could be for him and even reserved a spot on the fall roster just in case I change my mind. I wouldn't be opposed if he were actually interested, but he doesn't have the attention span to finish his lunch, let alone focus on a dance class.

Our first sushi experience with friends. Overall we came away feeling like it was repeatable but probably not preferable.

A LONG drive to the dinosaur museum at Thanksgiving Point. The kids loved it, of course, but every time we have to drive an hour or more just to hit a zoo or museum (or concerts and cultural events), I wonder why we live so far from everything. It's been a harder adjustment than I thought to live in cities for almost our entire marriage and then move to the farthest reaches of suburbia. I mean, we are almost in the country. Almost. We have cows pastured next to the church and goats trimming the city land down the street... but we do have sidewalks and two grocery stores and a library, so I'm clinging to the benefits of a lovely community and plenty of fresh air. Because we are probably going to live here forever.