So Martin starts school tomorrow, (a little behind the rest of the state, I know) and I decided that it is about time that I record the highlights of the second half of our summer before I forget it all.
In July, during the hottest two weeks of the summer, Martin had his swimming lessons. The heat was perfect for him; he was hardly shivering when he got done. While he was doing swimming lessons, the girls and I played at the nearby park. Except that it was too hot to do much playing, so after the first couple days I got smart and set up a blanket in the shade and Maddy and I sat there while Libby alternated between playing in the sun and resting in the shade with us. Martin really enjoyed his swimming lessons and did very well, passing level 2 with no problems.
Throughout June and July we again played T-ball once a week. This year was Libby’s first year playing. For the most part she was more interested in playing in the sand than trying to improve her T-ball skills, but she still had fun. Dave helped coach again and Martin really enjoyed being one of the biggest kids on the team.
I know that it is clear that he missed this ball, but it was still the best picture I got of him the one time I remembered to bring the camera.
By the end of the season, her glove was so dirty it was hard to tell it started out pink.
Perhaps Libby would have been more active in T-ball if she would have been able to wear her preferred uniform: a dress and sparkly heels.
In August we went on our annual Paulsen family and Woller family vacations. As it turned out, this year they were back to back, so we spend an entire week away from home spending the first half of the week with the Paulsens and the second half with the Wollers. Overall it was a lot of fun, but I hope that we never have to have back to back vacations again. It was surprisingly difficult to pack for both at the same time, and I was in desperate need of a full night’s sleep by the time we were done.
We were at a new location for Paulsen vacation this year, on Lake Mille Lacs. It was a nice place, but the fishing was terrible. That didn’t upset our kids too much. They had a ton of fun at the beach, on the playground, riding bikes, and just playing with their cousins. One of the highlights of the trip was when the kids found a caught a number of crawfish. Dave decided that it would fun to cook them and so he did. I think most everyone tried some, even Martin.
Libby spent the majority of her time on both vacations playing in the sand.
Martin and Logan carrying the crawfish back to the house
Watching Dave and Morgan peel the crawfish
Maddy spent a lot of time watching all the activity from her stroller. She turned 7 months while at Paulsen vacation.
Woller vacation got off to a little bit of a rough start when we showed up at Camp Croix and found people already in the cabins that I had reserved. (There was a bit of a mix-up and the cabins got double booked.) Anyways, it ended up not being a big deal as there were other nearby cabins available for us to use. Grandpa Paulsen was again generous enough to let us use the boat this year, and it was almost constantly in use for skiing, tubing, fishing, or just joy riding. Even out of the water the kids had a blast with it. They used it to pretend that they were skiing or tubing.
The weather was the hottest that I ever remember it being at Camp Croix. We spend almost all of our time down at the beach. I even got in the water with Maddy a couple of times. Since Amanda was there and willing to hold my crabby baby, I also got the chance to go tubing with Libby and Martin and by myself.
The fishing was good again this year, and we ended the vacation with a big fish fry. A delicious way to end.
Especially by the end of the week, Maddy was pretty grumpy unless I was holding her. There were a few times when she let someone else hold her though. Here Anna managed to get her fall asleep. (So excited to be moving closer to this potential babysitter!)
Grandpa also proved that he could outlast her and get her to eventually give up and fall asleep.
Eventually we did recover from our week of vacationing and decided to attempt a trip to the State Fair. We ended up going on Wednesday. It was hot, but not unbearable. Because of the heat and the fact that it was midweek, the crowds were quite small, which was great. We decided that we would leave when everyone started getting crabby, and we ended up staying the entire day! We did take one break and sat in the car with the AC running, but everyone did really well and we had a lot of fun. Martin noticed on the map that there was a LEGO exhibit, so we made sure to go there and the kids ended up getting free LEGO kits. That was certainly the highlight for Martin.
So I guess that we did do quite a bit this summer. No wonder it seemed to fly by so fast.
No comments:
Post a Comment