Summer!

I thought that with school ending for the summer, that I'd have more time.  I would blog, and clean my house, and organize my closets, and finish a gazillion projects that are in all stages of completion.

I do have more time, but I feel as busy as ever; it's just a different kind of busy.

We've camped with friends, put up a swimming pool, gone to a horse show, ran a race, gotten rid of a lot of junk, done some reading, taken an online class, done some baby sitting, gone to riding lessons, gone swimming, gone to Nantucket (Zeke), and are now hosting a child from NYC through the Fresh Air Fund.

I planned to do a bunch of posts, but that probably won't happen, so here are pics from our summer so far:

Ryley showed at a local 4-H show.

Her project horse is Willow, Aunt Lisi's Clydesdale cross.

She's a huge horse, and Ry did a great job handling her!

We finally got our pool set up and had to have water hauled in.

We had left home to go camping and had to come home to meet the water guy.

(We have a well that holds about 4% of what we needed to fill the pool.)

I didn't do a very good job taking photos during our 4 day camping experience.

It rained A LOT.

Most photos I did take were of these cuties.

We came home to a full pool.

The kids have been in it every day.

I only go in when it's hot out, which hasn't happened much.

This picture gets more than three sentences!  My colleague (and Zeke's teacher), Nancy, told me months ago that she was going to run her first 5k this summer.  It took place in her town and Zeke and I joined her.  Zeke did great!  He finished in about 27 minutes and was only 2 seconds away from being third in his age group.  The kids who beat him were 4-5 years older than him.  I did okay, about 31 minutes.  Next goal:  under 30!  We're running again on the 4th of July.

It's been raining here a lot.

Places are getting flooded.

We get outside whenever the rain stops for a minute or two.

JD's grandmother lives down by the lake and has a nice pool.

We went to visit her on Sunday, and Zeke was happy to have a cousin there to play with.

Quin loves that Memere always has jelly beans!

We have a little visitor this week from NYC.  Y is 6 and has been a great little guy so far.  Many local attractions give passes to Fresh Air Fund families, so I decided to take advantage of one and go to Shelburne Farms today.  Along with my three kids and Y, I also had the two DV boys who I'm watching a few days a week this summer.  The kids were all well behaved and had a lot of fun.

These two were obsessed with picking up the chickens.

I keep telling them that these photos will be shown at their wedding :)

Ian's mom and I were prego together, so we have lots of pictures of them through the years.

And another.