summer is over

Summer is over. Our house is almost back to normal after houseguests a week ago. We are resuming the school year schedule. Our nieces and nephews have started back to school at all levels: elementary, jr. high, high school, and college. For me, it feels like New Years Day and that I'm saying goodbye to another year. Maybe I'm only saying goodbye to family time. This summer we kicked it off with our trip to Scotland to visit Robbie. That was the last part of May. Then we came home and were truly Home. Robbie was home to provide ballast, energy and brute strength. He and John and Pete put in a new lamp post out front, cleaned out our garage and built a workbench, with no power tools, dug out a portion of our front lawn and installed a new drip system, augmented the soil and planted a new garden, and a flagstone path, installed a new attic fan. We got rid of a lot of stuff in our garage by either giving it to the Goodwill, posting and selling it on Craigslist, or just placing it on our curb with a FREE sign. Oh, what a feeling! We visited a friend's farm up north for a tomato festival. Oh, and just before that, Tommy landed in the hospital for four days with a collapsed lung. We made our annual trip to Sea Ranch in early August. John perfected his pizza making, Billy was up a couple of times from San Diego, and Pete had mini vacations including a trip to Speed Week on the Bonneville Flats. We got to visit with some old friends, whom we don't see during the school year. Now, we're "back in the saddle". The boys have school, work, and activities, I'm tutoring every day, Pete's still mushing along at AT&T and I need to savor the summer that we had. It's a new year.