Father & Sons Outing

I grew up LIVING for the Father and Son's Campouts, because at our house, that meant GIRL time (a VERY rare thing!), so I still get a bit giddy when that time rolls around, but this year, I was almost overwhelmed with what to do!--4 GIRLS!!!--and such an age range!! We couldn't really justify eating out (esp. w/ all of our budget ramifications), there were no great movies at the dollar theater (plus Anne and Lucy are abominable right now in theaters--as was proven at our GREAT Syracuse Community production of Music Man this past Monday, and again at the kids summer morning movie on Tues), so we settled w/ a shopping trip to Kohl's--Maddie's at such a tricky stage to find fitting pants for right now--(will she ever outgrow adjustable waists???)---though it's torture for Emily who doesn't get NEAR the amount of new clothes, since she has SO many handmedowns to choose from.  We got some dessert and nail polish at Wal-Mart on the way home though, picked up a Little Caesar's pizza, and came to enjoy a meal of pizza (I did make our special garlic butter dipping sauce--Emily's and Mom's favorite), strawberries, and chocolate milk.  We ate on the floor of the hallway, so Anne could be in the bathtub, then the older girls painted their nails with the new colors, and after the younger two were in bed, we older three watched the first half of Mansfield Park on our Netflix, and had choco-tacos for dessert.  It turned out to be such fun--and I realized WHAT we did mattered a lot less then WHO we were with.  Since the weather was good for the boys this year (it snowed in May last year), they didn't rush home, so we girls took off in the morning to check out the free day at Fort Buenaventura (a restored fort for mountain man Miles Goodyear, later bought by the Brownings).  It's mainly a nice campground w/ the fort you can go and see, and a small lake with canoe rides.  Of course we rode in a canoe for a while, but the lake was so small, that 15 minutes was about plenty to see all of it shore to shore.  Still, it was a nice outing, and the boys were home when we got back for lunch!  Besides loving Music Man this last week, we had fun watching the 3rd Narnia film together this weekend.  The children were pretty fascinated about this good C.S. Lewis, who not even being a member of the church, had so much understanding of good and evil and God.  I was getting a little worried about missing jam from the first crop of strawberries this season (we go through ours!), but then I learned they come on twice a year.  So I bought some strawberries, and even a few raspberries from a fresh stand, and then we were given LOTS of apricots, so we now have shelves and a freezer FULL of jam, as well as having tried a little delicious apricot fruit leather! We're now to our last week of summer, and I hate to see it end!! It will be good to have a routine and a little more calm, but this summer has been such a good and timely reminder for me of the importance of relaxing and being flexible--I usually don't even get thrilled about summer since I'm NOT so much a fun or party person, or a beach person, or a tanned person, or anything else very summery, but it HAS been fun having so much fun this year.  Hopefully, our "routine" will allow for a little more of that now as we get back into it.  We still have the county fair and a 3 day camping trip up at Willow Flats this week, so we'll go out w/ a big hurrah, but it's still hard to be counting the days down already!