Clinging

School starts tomorrow.

I know I should be thrilled, and the part of my brain that craves organization is ready for the girls to be back in school. I look around my house and see messes and clutter and projects that need to be done, and as I make lists I'm happy that life will settle back into a schedule so I can do it all.

But the rest of my brain? Totally mourning the end of summer.

I love the lazy mornings with my girls. I love the summer activities. I love days when the toughest decision we have to make is whether to go to the pool or the lake. I like eating dinner on the deck and sleeping with the windows open. I adore evenings with no homework. I like not having to think about making lunch until it's actually lunch time. I like the constant stream of suntanned kids through my house requesting popsicles and snacks. I love having friends up from Portland and going back to Utah and Oregon for vacations. I love the pool and the parks and the lakes and the sunshine and the smell of sunscreen. And I really like having the girls home.

I am not ready for school to start.

(But my house is.)

Today the plan is to squeeze as much fun as we can from the last day. Possibly some golf. And definitely the pool. And probably some kayaking as well. Did I mention I'm having a hard time letting go of summer?

While waiting for the paint to dry...

I have a lot more summer blogging to get caught up on (including part 2 of the Utah trip), but I'm knee deep in house projects right now. Here's a sneak peek:

We've also been trying to squeeze in every last bit of fun we can from this incredibly short and stingy summer.
And I started my new job this week, training during the day. My night shifts begin tonight. So I will be back with finished house projects, summer activities, and details on the new job. But I have a feeling sleep deprivation will be in charge for the next week or two...

Utah or Bust: Lazy E

Right after school got out in June we headed to Utah to visit family. We had such a fantastic time. Sometimes it's hard to juggle families and figure out who to see and when and how to fit it all in. But this time my family headed up to the cabin for a few days, so it was much easier to find a balance, and it was fantastic to hang out with my siblings and their kids for an extended amount of time.
This is one of my favorite places in the world. My grandparents built this cabin before I was born, and I was raised exploring that property. Now it's my parent's cabin and our kids are the ones running around filthy and happy.
That light, right there, coming through the aspens? (We call 'em "quakies.") You have no idea how beautiful it is. And in the fall it is breathtaking.
Maddie and Grandma made that "cabin bag" before we left. It was perfect for carrying around horny toads and rocks.
So this picture of Jordy is not actually from this trip, but it is priceless and perfectly captures the favorite past time of kids and adults alike at the cabin. Everyone brings a "candy bucket" and Grandpa gets to judge who has the best one. We combined candy buckets, and the end result was a beautiful thing.
Part of what was so amazing this time was seeing the entire transition to "next generation." When I was a kid it was me running all over exploring that mountain with my siblings and cousins, and then listening to my Grandma, aunts, and parents sing and play the guitar around the campfire at night. This time it was my kids and my siblings' kids exploring, with me and my siblings bumping into each other in the kitchen preparing meals and then Dad, Jodi, and Kolby playing guitar around the campfire. There's a Vampire Weekend song I love with a line that says, "Me and my cousins and you and your cousins, it's a line that's always running." I couldn't get it out of my head this weekend.
Here's the whole crew in our Lazy E shirts Grandma made for us, right before we started the Lazy E Summer Games.

Kalee's game was a crazy video/photo scavenger hunt that we played in teams. I think we need a video made with the photos.

(Three blonds screwing in a lightbulb.)

Kolby, wearing nothing but nature.

And as every family knows, it's all fun and games until someone gets hurt.

Apparently, Great Danes do not like water fights.

Every once in a while we need a trip to the ER in Price to add to the cabin lore. And at least Kolby and I were wearing matching shirts for that ER trip.

It was a fantastic weekend, and I'm already looking forward to doing it again next year!

Summer Sports

We have had a pretty busy summer, but I don't think that's why I haven't been blogging. I just don't have a good routine that allows for blogging while the kids are home.

So how about if I work on catching up?

Amelia played softball again this year, and she loved it. By the end of the season the girls were really getting good, hitting hard, and making some good plays.

Amelia also gave swim team another shot this year. The weather here managed to be the pits whenever we had swim meets, which was not fun standing beside a pool, but she had a great time. The photos below are from "B Champs," the last big meet of the season where all of the teams compete against each other. It POURED the entire meet. In mid-July.

We pitched our little 2 man tent for the kids to hang out in to get out of the rain. It was like a little girl sweat lodge in there with the wet swimsuits and summer rain.
Amelia loved swim meets because she got to hang out with her friends and buy snacks at the snack bar. And even practices were fun because she and her friends would walk to the pool, then shower and get dressed after practice and walk back home--and sometimes they were allowed to buy fries or icecream from the snackbar after practice. (Clearly, half the fun of swim team was the snackbar.)

Maddie did diving again this year, and she loved every second of it. She's not big on having activities every day, so last year she only went to practice 2-3 days a week. This year she went 5 days a week, sometimes with two practices a day, and she never complained or asked to skip practice. And she showed some great growth! She placed in the top 3-4 every meet, and took 2nd place at dive champs at the end of the season. Oddly enough, we had decent weather for most of her dive meets.

On top of all the swim and dive meets, the girls were also doing tennis lessons three days a week through early August. By the time all that wrapped up, we were pooped and ready for some dinners at home and lazy mornings without running back and forth between two different pools and the tennis courts. And lazy mornings we have had...

On my nightstand

I love to read. One of the best things about being done with school and done with studying is that I can now read as much as I want.

However, I've already had to buy two books from the library this summer because of water damage from taking them to the pool, so I'm swearing off the library for a while.

I've always had a difficult relationship with books. I love to own them. I love them on my bookshelf and I love passing them along when I love them. But I read them so quickly that it feels wasteful to buy them new, so I rarely do.

Which is why I love Goodwill so much! Whenever I'm in need of a new book or four, I can run over to Goodwill and pick up a new one for a dollar each. As long as I don't have a specific book in mind, or as long as I'm patient, it works. (I had to go back a few times before they finally had that Tana French book).

Back in the saddle again.

Enough distractions and procrastinating. Time to get back into the swing of things with my blog. I'm just so far behind...

So a couple quickies tonight and then I'll try to do our vacations and other activities.

My blog book. I love it. I'm in love with it. I caress it and sleep with it under my pillow. Last summer my sister Michelle showed us that she had printed her blog into books using Blurb. They were so cute in the 7x7 (or 8x8?) size, and it was so fun to look through a whole year's worth of pictures and stories. So when Groupon had a Blurb deal a month or two ago, I snatched one up. (And then another one a few weeks later.)

But those #@^& Groupons have an expiration date! I suppose that is good otherwise me and all the rest of ya'll wouldn't have scrambled to get our blog books printed by August 3.

So here's a couple pics of the finished product:

I hope my fingers don't look that creepy in real life.

(A few details in case you are doing one--I did the image wrap cover, 7x7 size, 150 pages, premium paper lustre finish).

And with that I am done with feeling guilty about not doing scrapbooks anymore. No mess. No glue. No dining room table covered in craft supplies. (Or at least not my own). I might just get ambitious and whip up some books for the girls.

Pathetic Update

I promise I will catch up on my blogging--the very blogging I haven't been doing because I've been too busy having fun.

But first I have to finish two things:

1. The cumbersome task of turning one year of my blog into a book because my Groupon expires on August 3rd. Michelle made it look easy, and it is proving to be anything but easy for me. And that's only doing one year of blogging. Let's hope the next two years are easier.
2. Panicking about being an unemployed nurse. Well, the panic part probably won't end until I am actually working as an RN. But I need to finish with today's panic attack, and that won't be complete until I've checked the job boards for every hospital within 30 miles, as well as Craigslist and Monster, and then applied for any jobs that seem like they might possibly entertain the thought of hiring an inexperienced but very enthusiastic new RN. (And just a warning, if you write in my comments that there is a nursing shortage and that hospitals should be begging me to work for them, I will get on an airplane and fly to wherever you are just so I can personally punch-you-in-the-FACE. There is not a nursing shortage. And telling someone unemployed that there's an abundance of jobs in their field is as mean as telling someone overweight that you don't have to try at all to stay thin.)

So yeah. That all sounds like I'm not enjoying my summer, but I am absolutely 100% enjoying my "summer." (Did you know that Seattle has only had 78 minutes of temperatures above 80 degrees so far this year? It's true). And I will be back soon to catch ya'll up on the fun we've been having.