Our Last Week of Summer

At the beginning of the summer, we asked the kids what they would like to do while school was out.  We were pretty busy all summer, with lots of family and friends visiting and some of our own traveling.  The summer has flown by, and this week we decided we needed to squeeze in a few more fun things before school starts again.  We were able to cross off the final item from the kids' Summer Bucket List: we went swimming.  Here's what we did this week:

On Monday we had some time with dear friends from Florida,

who Ben grew up practically as family. They were in town and were kind enough

to spend the afternoon with us.  We loved visiting with them and after

a fun lunch, we took them to one of our favorite spots, Bridal Veil Falls.

Of course the kids took the opportunity to feed and pet the trout and to

walk around at the bottom of the waterfall.  Later that afternoon,

a neighbor invited the kids to play in her backyard kiddie pool, then we all

had a great time at a neighborhood dinner/water balloon volleyball game.

On Tuesday Ben and The Bigs met up with my aunt and cousins

for a little while, then spent an hour at the nickel arcade.

That night we had a Family Movie Night.

On Wednesday, I took the three youngest on a bike ride and we played

at a park for a little while.  In the afternoon, we made obstacle courses

in the back yard, then some friends came over to play.

The big event on Thursday was Back to School Night for all of The Bigs.

They were all pretty excited, but Eliza was absolutely ecstatic about

starting school.  She was quite disappointed when she found out that school

wouldn't start for her for several more days.

On Friday, we went swimming!  Finally!  We decided to go to a fun little

community pool nearby that was very kid-friendly.  We had a wonderful time

on the lazy river and the kiddie slides, and Ben took The Bigs on the big slide many,

many times.  One of my favorite things was that on the lazy river, with Luke and

Eliza sharing a little pink boat float, Luke would duck his head and cover his face

whenever we floated under the waterfall.  It was so cute.

When we got home, Cat and Ben made us strawberry ice cream in the blender

and it was an awesome sweet, fresh treat.  We ate it up sitting in the shade in the front yard.

Today we had one more big adventure but it deserves its own post, so look for it soon.  What did we do, exactly? I'll give you a clue courtesy of my girl Jane Austen.  This evening after our adventure I kept thinking of this line for Mrs. Bennett from Pride and Prejudice: "A little sea-bathing would set me up forever."