Summer's over

Wow, I can't believe Labor Day is over. I guess this marks the unofficial end of summer. Of course there really wasn't much "summer" around here anyway. I think this was one of the coldest summers on record. Not too many steamy 95 plus days to write about. I'm hoping next summer is nice and hot. Yes. I know be careful what you wish for. Last time I made a weather wish was when we moved from Missouri to Michigan and I openly wished for 5 feet of snow....that Jan we got 4 feet. Don't worry all of you who live in or near the state of SD...I only want a few 95 plus days with lots of sunny and 85's thrown in for good measure.

So what did I do with my 3 day weekend?? Well we cleaned carpets. Yes, it was that time of the year again. We usually rent a steam cleaner a few times a year and make our carpet change colors. OK, it's not that dirty but you get the meaning. We rented the cleaner Sat afternoon and spent that evening and the next morning shampooing. Well the loving husband did the actual shampooing and I vacuumed and picked things up and washed walls and windows. It is amazing how much time we have now that we are not dedicating every spare minute practicing Tae Kwan Do. We still found time to take the kids to the pool and swim and on Monday my friend Tobi stopped over with her family. They were geocaching and wanted to know if we were interested. What is geocaching? It's kinda like hide and seek meets hiking. You download locations of caches along with GPS coordinates and then you try to locate them. One of the caches they were looking for was less than a mile from my house. Hubby stayed behind but I took the kids and off we went. I happen to live near a state park and the bike path connects with a hiking trail a few blocks away so we set off to enter the park and look. Now the funny thing about GPS...it will tell you coordinates but won't let you know if there is a direct route to them. The cache we were looking for was quite near my house but because rules dictate that they be on public property or public access places, we ended up walking a lot further than the coordinates said we would. If we could have cut through a yard and gone directly into the park it would have been much shorter. The kids had lots of fun tramping though some really long tall grass and looking all over the place for a very tiny object. I finally found it, on top of a pine cone hanging in a tree.

After we got back home Andrew passed out. Poor kid was pretty tired. After he woke up we went out to visit a co-worker of Jim's who had a baby a few weeks ago. I forget how tiny newborns are. Rachael picked little Jennifer up and all I could think was "my gosh she's little". I just love holding newborns. They are so cute and snuggley and they make those adorable baby sounds. Holding the little one I had a bout of "baby craving" but it quickly passed. The kids had fun playing with Samantha. Jennifer's big sister. I had to laugh at hubby....he's just so a dad. He was holding the little one and she was completely passed out and the picture of contentment. I actually had to remind him that we needed to be going and give the baby back. He even commented that he would have considered/had a 4th if I wouldn't have done the surgery after Andrew. He did however say that the whole 2 am waking up thing was not something he wanted to repeat. And no, there will be no new additions to our family unless they have 4 legs and fur.

We had a very fun and relaxing weekend. The only things we did not get done was the lawn (it really didn't need to be moved) and the salsa. We have the stuff but did not get around to making it. I'm thinking tomorrow.