Summer's end

July flew by and August is almost gone too. I hate to see it go, I have always loved the summertime. Tonight the kids thought that I had let them stay up REALLY late since it was actually dark when they got into bed.
David was able to take a week of vacation time in July and we flew to Oregon for a trip that was just too short. Wow we saw alot of relatives! It was a good time of reconnecting with people and letting the kids reconnect with cousins. We sure miss everyone out there. Going "home" was like a breath of fresh air for me, I loved it. It was good to come to our real home, though, and swing back into real life here.
For over a month we owned our very first family pets. Goldfish. It was fun while it lasted. Several wading pools in town release 400 goldfish into their pool one day midsummer(it is when they are refilling the pool, before chemicals go in) and let kids try to catch them in a container and take them home. It was FUN and we came home with four fish. Every morning we would make our way to the breakfast table, wondering if the fish would be swimming around or floating upside down. Each one was carried outside on a slotted spoon and buried in the flowerbed. Two of them have crosses. Alec dug his up several days later and reburied it...just curious I guess.
The kids have been "building stuff" out in the yard. We brought home a carload of free lumber scraps from Home Depot and Jan and Alec built a bike jump (with some help), some boats to float in their plastic pool and some other stuff. Most of their spare moments have been spent outside hammering this last week (Anne too).
The kids and I have been driving out to Wadsworth every weekday for the last two weeks for swimming lessons. (It is just a twenty-five minute drive, but somehow, here, the way people think of it is "driving ALL the way out to Wadsworth".) Jan is really swimming, and Alec is just starting to paddle around too. The first week we went out we missed three days because of thunderstorms (Humidity! That whole week I felt as though we were living in a bathroom while someone was taking a shower). We have two make up lessons this week for the days the pool was out of commission because it was directly hit by lightning. Now, when the kids are out playing in the plastic pool in the backyard Jan hustles everybody out at the least hint of thunderstorm. She takes such good care of everybody.
That was the week we had our first tornado warning, too.
All of the sudden everyone is talking about school starting and fall coming. For some reason I just am not ready for summer to be over yet. All of that canning that I didn't get done, the planning for school that I have yet to do. I work really hard and never seem to get it all done...but I do take lots of breaks to race kids around the house (they make a mark for every trip around the house...Jan is winning right now) laugh over their funny books from the library and set the chipmunk traps, and get out junk so they can do projects and do all of the things that never make it onto my to do list but they are the only things that we remember when the day is over.
On the other hand, it is good to see time passing since that means progressing through residency. Right now just checking off one more day of it is good! No matter how hard David works he never gets it all done either.

"For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them." Ephesians 2