I Wish Summer Would Never End.

I know everyone at this time of year is so excited for fall. Not me. Fall is fine, fall is fun, but summer forever. Especially when you live somewhere where summer seems rather short.

We have swum (isn't any occasion to use "swum" the best?) and boated and partied all summer long. We have eaten more watermelon and corn on the cob than I can describe. We have even taken our corn to a new level with elote. Dan has smoked steaks and roasts and butts (ha!) on his new smoker. 

Our neighbors are some of the best gardeners on the planet. They went out of town for a month and asked us to harvest their garden. It was amazing. I made one zillion zucchini chocolate chip muffins. Dan learned to make Zuppa Toscana. I learned how to cook beets. We had a pretty successful garden as well. We've eaten like kings.

Part of our garden:

Bounty from Lee and Earl's garden:

Lee and Earl's amazing garden:

As always, we crashed other churches' Vacation Bible Camps. Three this year.

This dark photo is June accepting an award for memorizing the required verses at one of the camps.

We hiked into Saint Peter's Village to use the rope swing and go down the rock slides.

First you must climb over all of these rocks.

Swimming, Tarzan-style!

Rock slide:

Gwen's birthday was in July. It was on the same day as a summer party I scheduled for one of our co-ops. I didn't even realize that it was on Gwen's birthday until two days before. 

Picking out which donut she wanted for her birthday breakfast.

New shirt from Grandma Sandy, plus some spending money.

Charm bracelet from Grandma Kristi:

Summer party that day. It was her friend Dora's birthday as well so we moms were able to pretend that this party was for them. Except it wasn't. 

I convinced a bunch of moms to launch a sneak attack on all of the kids with some water balloons. When they retaliated, I picked up someone's baby, hoping that kids wouldn't throw water balloons at a woman with a baby. But they did.

Lots of swimming and boating, but not lots of photos of either. The kids all love tubing, and the girls love knee boarding. I have finally gotten up on skis, but haven't stayed up long enough to count it. We are going again a couple more times before it's too cold, and I'm really hoping I can accomplish this goal before we put the boat away for the winter.

We attended a class one evening all about fireflies. 

The girls and I attended a performance by BYU-Idaho's Dance Alliance team.

June started wearing reading glasses:

The kids have loved on Gilbert. They love him TO DEATH. Like he might die of being annoyed by them. We have had many talks about how no one likes being chased down and poked constantly. To no avail.

We have been able to attend the temple a lot this summer. Two times on our vacation to Utah, and three times since coming home. I took my friend Cathyjo through for her first time. Her son was home from his mission to have surgery and was able to see his mother go through the temple. He was so sad to have to come home from his mission for a couple of months, but we now all see how it was the Lord's timing.

Dan and I attended the temple twice together this month. That is a very rare occurrence. Our ward offered free childcare at the church building across the street one of the times, which was a huge blessing for us.

This is why I love summer. This particular summer we decided not to do any sports and hardly any camps so that we could swim and go to the temple and boat. It was awesome. 

Today we had our Back to School Feast, and tonight Dan will give the kids and me blessings for our new school year. Technically, we started doing a few things at the beginning of August, namely math, handwriting, music, and some reading. But this week and next our co-ops will resume, and we will be full-fledged schooling for the next several months. I know it's time but in my heart I'll be thinking about swimming.

The End.