the end of summer

It seems like just yesterday that I was food blogging about summer produce and banana cakes. Suddenly I look at the calendar and six weeks have flown by and my oldest child is a first-grader. Where does the time go?

To be honest, though, part of the reason I wasn't blogging is because we deliberately had a pretty slow summer. We stayed home a lot, played in the backyard, with weekly trips to our local library and occasional day trips to a beach or a park. We had a nice visit with my family, but sadly we were unable to visit Greg's family this summer. We played a lot of frisbee, went swimming a couple of times, went hiking only once, went camping not at all. There was very little that seemed worth posting on the blog, and we barely took any photos during the second half of summer anyway. Here are a couple of exceptions:


There have been some milestones, some personal accomplishments. Evan is in the beginning stages of learning to read, and he is potty trained! Surprisingly, with how difficult he's been about practically everything, his entire life, potty training turned out to be easy. Much easier than with James, even, and I think that's the first time I've been able to say that about the two of them. Once Evan decided to do it, he did it 100% and never looked back.

James started school today. First grade! For the first time, he will be gone all day long. He stepped onto the bus today -- in typical James fashion -- without a backwards glance, not even when his brother burst into tears because he couldn't get on the bus with the other neighborhood kids.

We had a happy summer -- a relaxed, laid-back, happy summer. But I'm starting to look forward to fall. And now that I'm actually writing again, I'm looking forward to a return to blogging as well.