End of Summer

End of life as I know it!!!!!! I know, I am being dramatic. But, it is just a matter of hours now that Macie will start kindergarten. Tonite, I had a vision of her eating lunch in that great big cafeteria will all the other kiddos. No me. She will love it though. Probably won't miss me a bit. This is going to be hard for me! Its enough to make me consider home schooling.... not really, but ALMOST! Kindergarten should not be all day. They should at least get out at 2 or something. I think the hardest part will be when Maris and I do stuff like playdates and library. I spent the last week trying to cram in all this fun stuff. We went to the zoo, she went swimming with Aunt Patti, we went swimming for playgroup, went to the Children's museum and saw Imax Dolphins, got her hair cut at Sweet n Sassy and had lunch with Daddy at his office. And, today, the whole family went to NRH2O, a water park. After the intial shock it will all be fine and dandy, I'm sure. I am looking forward to getting into some kind of a routine. School will force that a little. With Maris in mothers day out for 2 days/wk, I have visions of me completing tons of sewing projects, udpating my blog frequently, having a spotless house and catching up on all kinds of projects that have been building up.
Ok, with all that said, I wanted to post some pictures of our summer. Again, I can't format all this so it looks pretty and organized, so I am just going to post pictures and you can figure out what is what. In June, Sara, Lily and Natalie came to visit. It was SO much fun! The girls were a hoot! Lily and Macie staying up all hours chatting and giggling in Macie's room. Sara and I crammed in all that was humanly possible with 4 girls in tow.
For the 4th of July, we went to my parent's house. I think it is going to be a tradition. We picked blackberries and shot fireworks. The guys and the older kids (there were 14 great grandkids there) put on a firework show that would have compared with any city sponsored show. It was amazing. It had poured down rain right before dark and cooled everything off. We snuggled up with blankets and jackets on the front porch and watched the show. Can't beat that. The sky right before dark was amazing too.
In late July, we went to Lake Murray with 3 other families from our church. We stayed in cabins and had campfires and cookouts. One day we rented a double deck party barge thing that had a slide off the top deck and a jet ski to play with. We brought the boat too. We had a lot of fun.
Sometime in there we also went to a Ranger game. Through the library reading club, Macie got to parade around the field before the game started. I think John was more excited about that than she was. But, it was cool. Ice cream and french fries got us all the way to the 7th inning. I was impressed.
August seems to be clouded by the fact that my Dad was and is still so sick. But, like I said above, we managed to do a bunch of fun stuff. We even stopped by Sulphur on the way back from visiting my Dad. The girls loved it. No pictures of any of that.

Ok, are you still reading? This is a long post. I must go now and finish a dress I am making for Macie. Will post more with all my new free time next week........ Here are the pictures in no particular order. I will have to add "figure out how to blog" to my list of projects.