so long, summer...

I had meetings three days last week....and the kids come on Monday.

Summer is officially over for us.  :-(

Last summer was a rich one, spiritually.  This one will forever be known as the Summer of the Move.  It was only across town.  Only 6 or 7 miles.  But from a house where we've lived forever (my husband lived there as a kid, and then off and on, until he ended up there for good in the late 1970's).  It's a house where we barely had room to turn around (or put up a Christmas tree) to a place where we have room to stretch.  But it has been a full time job - moving.  Dirty, hot, heavy, stressful.  And we are still not totally done...

But I digress....in honor of the end of summer, perhaps some pictures that did NOT make the blog are in order....

This is what the grass looked like in June.  We went a long time without rain.  

But there were some yummy things produced in the garden.  

Those red bell peppers (top right)...they were rather underwhelming.

The kids' "tree house".

It was one of the things that had to go in preparation of the move.

The fence, too.

It has been there for many, many years.  

Twenty, maybe.

Hurricane Gustave flattened it a few years ago. 

But we stood it back up, patched it, tied it together...

Too precarious to leave for a renter, it's gone now.

Someone came and hauled the sections away...to use again.

The single picture that I have of the moving chaos. 

It was just too horrible to photograph.

The collected, neglected junk of so many years.

A diversion from the chaos.

My parents, sister, and nephew visited.

Twice.

I live in a house that people can visit now!

Our annual altar server outing.

With our kind pastor and the majority of our faithful altar servers.

They told me I had to be in the picture this year.

I went with the flow.

The cake for my mother-in-law's 80th birthday.

Her name is Dolly.  

Oops.

This is how the younger teen spent the majority of his last week of summer vacation.

Swimmer's Ear kicked his ....

Two trips to the doctor's office, antibiotic ear drops, and oral anti-b's, and I think we're on the downhill side.

And that, boys and girls, is part of the story of my life.