Enjoying Summer

It's starting to finally feel like summer to me! The weather has warmed up and become more "summer-like" so we've been able to do lots of fun things outside recently. On Saturday morning we took a spontaneous family trip to the zoo and had a great time. The last time we'd been to the zoo, Anna REALLY wanted to ride the train, but I convinced her that it was a special activity to do with Daddy ... I didn't want to try and haul Kate on the train, too. When we told Anna we were going to the zoo, the next words out of her mouth were "Ride da twain wif Daddy?" They had fun :)


On Sunday afternoon/evening we had a picnic at our neighborhood park with some neighbor friends. Anna seems to get more of a kick out of playing in the sand than anything else at the park right now, except for maybe the swings. And of course, not just normal swinging, but big swings are required. Anna usually wants to be horizontal on the back part of the swing to think it's a big enough swing ... I wonder who taught her that!

I decided to try a repeat of the picnic at the park on Wednesday morning because it was such a beautiful day and we didn't have any plans for the morning. It went fairly well, but I don't think Anna quite understands that at a picnic, you're actually supposed to EAT your meal, too :)


Somebody should keep an eye on this kid when she learns to drive; all I asked her to do was say "yeah" and she took both hands off of the wheel. Crazy driver! By the way, the play equipment in the background is what we did all the fundraising for last fall; it's finally installed!

One thing that has made this past week more enjoyable for me is that I'm getting some real sleep these days. Kate officially slept through the night (roughly 8 until 6) on Friday night and has been keeping up with it since then, although this morning she gave us a 5:30 a.m. wake-up call. Looks like we still have to work out some of the kinks, but I'm just thankful I'm getting better sleep than I have in probably 7 or 8 months! Kate seems to appreciate the longer sleep, too.


And finally, for anyone who's wondering, we're managing to keep up with most of the garden stuff still, although the tomatoes, corn, and zucchini aren't ready yet. The peas didn't do so well this year, but we're still harvesting and freezing broccoli like crazy. The beans and cucmbers are slowly (thankfully!) and steadily coming in; the potatoes are huge this year and are slowly being dug and dried. We had a great crop of "spring" raspberries and we still have the fall crop to enjoy while the apples, pears, and plums look to be growing well. I haven't seen too many pumpkins or other squash just yet, but they've still got plenty of time. Good think Anna likes to help with all of the garden stuff!