Another fair, come and gone...

I tried to count the other day...I think I've worked around 13? 14? 15? fairs now. Despite it being a pretty cold Saturday, there was a huge turn out, and the rest of the days too, I think. Saturday is always the busiest though. Eli was rather challenging this year...overly excited and showing off...if you can call exaggeratedly picking your nose when somebody asks to take your picture showing off... Anyway, we had our fantastic mother's helper, Moriah, with us, and that made things 100 times easier, that extra set of eyes and hands, and the only other person that The Baby will happily snuggle with. The Fair is always the no-turning-back start of fall, and does it ever feel like Fall today. I hope we get a new furnace SOON! Oh, and my regular fancyish camera is broken and awaiting shipment back to the company, so excuse the poor quality, point & shoot camera shots.

Howling at the moon.

Summer's End

The Kid's first week of school, 13 in his class this year. He loves it, as usual. Three of his new classmates are tiny, triplet sisters. Very cute. I love Wellspring's pay-what-you-can policy, but our tuition bartering has stressed me out this weekend. We had to clean the school, make seven new desks and I've been going door to door begging area businesses to donate to the annual silent auction fundraiser... Too much going on! Not to mention Justin had to spend part of today at work, and my camera lens kicked the bucket AND I never noticed that the registration and inspection were overdue on my car, luckily we got off with only a warning a couple days ago. So...I'm feeling a tad overwhelmed. But I will try to head off my seasonal depression this year and spare you the pathetic, complaining posts of misery. I'm usually OK until Christmas anyhow. January is usually not terrible either, because winter is still fairly novel at that point. It's February & March that are the worst for me, by then we've run out of wood, money, and patience. I will do my best to keep it together and keep my fingers crossed for an easy winter!

We bought a van...NOT a minivan, but a huge 15 passenger one. To be used for Justin's work. Also will be handy for trips to The Island, since it gets decent gas mileage. Looking forward to not being crammed into a tiny car for 16 hours. And it has an overhead DVD player - my one exception to the no tv rule for the kids is...you guessed it! A gruelingly long road trip! (Plus our entire family can go out for Chinese together...as we did tonight.) We have two mostly dead trucks for sale, if anyone's interested!

My beautiful, funny boys.

Now That It's Nearly Over, Summer Has Finally Arrived

A few shots from the last week or so...

August

Late summer,
The cricket's high voltage hum
Grows louder.
A frantic sound that
Fills my head on toasted gold afternoons, while
The days hang deceptive, slow and languidly passing.

Perhaps they know of
The coming cold.
Desperate need to push out their song
Before folding wing and fading into the quiet,
The deathly stillness of the frozen woodpile.
The frost covered leaves.

Back From Paradise

Whoops. Apparently you CAN'T drive onto a sand dune with a Honda Accord...

Good morning spiders!

The water was warm, warm, warm!

This summer, the field across the road was planted with Canola.

Sweaty head hair.

Wonderful week on the island. Sunny and HOT...almost too hot a few times even. Thank goodness for the two or three trips to the beach every day! We did a little work - Justin finished the shingles on the guest cabin roof and installed pine tongue & groove walls in there too. We collected interesting pieces of driftwood and built a railing on our cabin's stairway, and the boys built a dog house for Captain out of our scrap pile. Mostly though, we just sat in the sand with frothy surf kissing our toes and RELAXED! Also made one million sand castles and ate WAY too many ice cream cones. Of course, more pictures at my flickr page...link in the list on the right!