Summer Days

Although I felt like half of our summer was taken up with travelling, we were still able to cram in lots of fun days, and lots of lazy days.  It helps that we homeschool and I refused to start back to school at the beginning of August which is when the schools were starting around here. I'm old fashioned and we started the day after Labor Day, which is when we started when I was a kid.  We did a lot of the usual summer things like beach days (still kinda weird that that's our normal!), thunderstorm days spent in our jammies watching movies, and running errands, and just enjoying less stress without all of our normal school year commitments.  We made a summer bucket list at the beginning of the summer and while we didn't even come close to checking off everything, we did do a few fun things from the list like going to see Finding Dory, eating macarons, riding Cobra's Curse and painting my girl's desk.  We will have to make a list next summer and see if we can do any better!  I hardly took my big camera out at all this summer after our travels, so I'm really thankful for my iPhone even though I hate it at times because it's so addicting and I'm always threatening to get rid of it for an old school flip phone! I do appreciate the ease of taking photos when I'm out and about though.  I'm still figuring out how I'd deal with my Instagram addiction if I didn't have a smart phone.  Anyway, we had a pretty great summer and I took a bunch of photos to remember it by, so here you go! 

When we got back from Ohio, my little sister was in town to visit with my adorable niece.  We had some fun beach days with her.  She loved the sand!

She adores my girl and wants to do everything she does.  She was copying her and reading a book while my girl read a book.  And I just love that they are 9 years apart which is exactly how far apart my sisters and I are.  It is so fun to watch them together and think that was just how we were!

No, we didn't get a hamster, but we did pet sit for our friends while they were on vacation.  It was so fun having little Pinchki in our house for the week!  My kids both adored her, and I'm not gonna lie, I kinda liked her too.  Taking her picture was so hard because she's so twitchy and fast!  

Another beach day when we were chased away by storms.  I love the wind blowing her hair.

You could see a bunch of different rain clouds out over the water.  It was very cool. I took this panoramic shot and love how I got them all in one shot!

We went to this crazy art installation at Amalie Arena (where the Tampa Bay Lightning hockey team plays) called The Beach.  It was basically millions of little plastic balls you could swim in and they made it look like a modern all white beach with a pier.  It was fun!

We spent an evening at the driving range brushing up on our swings.  We haven't gotten the kids back into lessons, but my boy is still a golf lover so maybe this spring we will.

My girl got some new reading glasses and she spent most of her free time this summer reading.  We both read the Miss Peregrine's book and so we went to the see the movie together with friends.  The book is always better though, and it was true of that story as well!  The bottom right photo is the first day of their homeschool co-op.  It did start in August, but we didn't officially start our school until after Labor Day.

I'm sad that summer is over but I'm glad we live in Florida where it is eternal summer!  I can enjoy my favorite season all year, but too bad we can't have no school all year!