The Last Ditch

As summer wound down, so did my energy and desire to do anything fun at all with the kids. The evenings lost a little light, and I followed suit. But then the inevitable happened. I allowed that ever-present, niggling little voice to question my good-mother status. Summer's ending - quick! Does everyone have sun-burnished hair? Has everyone laughed them self sick at least once? Have we all exhausted ourselves with all the fun?

Um...nope. Like I mentioned before, this summer was a little bit challenging. Troy was gone a lot. I felt like every single day I was at a full sprint doing nothing but trying to not fall behind even further. We did do some fun stuff, of course, but really our big San Diego adventure happened right at summer's outset, and things sort of coasted along from there. I never did fall into (or climb into as the case may be) a steady schedule - I never instigated daily chores or reading times or a weekly visit to anyplace like library trips or a favorite park or anything. We just survived from day to day.

So of course I do what I do every summer. In fact, I am almost positive that there is a blog post JUST like this one written at the end of all my summers. I'm not going to go back and check - it's too embarrassing to remind myself that I never can get summer figured out. I started cramming in a bunch of last-two-week activities; things we should have been doing all summer and just hadn't been. Things like, you know, going swimming at the city pool. (You'd think that would have happened a time or two.) We went to the zoo, much to 66% of my childrens' dismay. Granted, it really was a hot and crowded day, but since I have a zoo pass and since we hadn't used it much....we went! What else did we do? I'll tell you one thing we did NOT do. That would be going to Lagoon. Not only did I not want to pay $125 for the four of us to get in, but my childrens' taste in amusement park fun differs so vastly that I had no idea how I would keep us all together. Bitty? No roller coaster never not ever ever. Stomper? Every single roller coaster always! (Almost.) Skippidy? Might try a roller coaster, but isn't tall enough for most of them. And do not mention the swimming area at Lagoon to me - that is a place I will be happy to never visit again. So yes, no trips to Lagoon.  More like a lego outing at the library and one trip to a bounce house warehouse.  Of course we made an event out of eating at Ugurt, our favorite local frozen yogurt shop.  (200 South above 1300 East - you should go check it out.) We tried to feel summery, and I think we did.  (And at the moment I'm choosing to define 'summery' as 'totally wiped out and ready for school to start.' Check!)


Legos at the Library:

Bounce House visit, where I even splurged on the Hurricane Machine:

Ugurt:

A couple of half-hearted photos from Hogle Zoo:

Checking out the display at The Sweet Tooth Fairy, where Bitty had a $5 gift certificate to spend: