End of Summer

It's been a fun summer. I'm actually shocked at how fast it went. When school first got out at the beginning of June I was seriously not excited and truthfully a little nervous. I remember wondering what in the world I was gonna do to keep my girls busy for 12 weeks! But holy cow those 12 weeks totally flew by! I didn't stick to the strict schedule I'd originally planned on following (my "school" type summer lasted one day :). Instead I tried to get out and do as much as possible. Our ward had a summer calendar full of weekly activities for whoever wanted to meet up. Monday we always met at a park, Tuesday was $1 movies (I only took the kids twice- Elle couldn't really handle sitting through a whole movie), Wednesday was different performances at the library (favorites were the balloon man and juggler), Thursday was beach day, and Friday was open for whatever. Whenever our friends with pools sent out an invite, we'd always jump on it (totally missed having a pool this summer). We hit up lots of different parks, checked out hundreds of new books, had dozens of picnics, and built many a sand castle. It was fun to be able to see lots of family (every extended member of the Jenkins side and over half of the Rudd side). And we just got back (Sunday night) from a week vacation in Huntsville, Utah (definitely want to make it a yearly tradition). We definitely had a good summer and made lots of great memories, but now I'm very much ready for school to start! Tomorrow's the big day and I'm not sure who's more excited- Madi or Me!! Gotta run go make 1st day of school posters!

Luckily, beach trips won't end just because summer's over!

Another summer favorite- family dinners in our backyard (we ate outside almost every single night).