August

 I love summer. August is fading quickly into Autumn and before you know it we will be sewing Halloween costumes and decorating for Christmas.  This has been the best summer.  We have had so much fun, learned so many new things, accomplished so many tasks and made loads of new plans for the coming months, years, and whole life.  It has cooled off outside and yesterday we enjoyed our second fire of the season in our little firepit, made from river rocks we found on one of our many adventures. We have been so busy, it has been so hot, and we had no chairs. 

 Thankfully on Saturday, we went to the Rte. 11 Yard Crawl, and amazingly found 2 large chairs and 2 small chairs (we had 1 small chair already), so now we have 5 camp chairs. One for every person. And seeing 2 large chairs and 3 little chairs with 3 little people sitting in them, staring in awe at the flames of our humble fire, beneath our largest tree was so cozy. My heart melted in each and every way.

 Other yard-crawl finds included a box full of sweet (and some ugly) vintage linens and things (for $3!), Jan Brett's "The Hat", and a lovely new bookshelf for our living room. It was a successful outing, complete with snow cones and french fries. The sweet dresses pictured above are a bit of a mystery as some of them had no holes at the neck, and others had very small neck holes and loops at the top.  They were hand-crocheted and must have taken some time.  We cut holes to fit some of our dolls, and they are entirely sweet.  My mom thinks they might be dish cloths?  They are too pretty for scrubbing pots.

 We are slowly wrapping up our summer with a little bit of school and trying to find some rhythm in our daily lives between cramming in all the fun things we have to do before summer is over. I have stuffed most of the contents of our life into plastic tubs, and am possibly the most organized I have been in my entire life.  And yet I still have piles of laundry everywhere. Everything has a place even if things don't always make it to their places.  There is comfort in that at least.

In other big news, my children learned how to turn the table into a little house! :)  They must have all 3 played in there for hours.  It really doesn't seem so long ago that my brother and I were building little cushion forts and houses out of our card table.  Childhood is so precious, and fleeting, much like summer, fading into fall. And so I try to enjoy the little things, between all the washing, scrubbing and cleaning that we mamas spend our days doing.

Make believe, and stories, songs and magical worlds, peaches and ice cream, fairies and fire light..... that is how we will spend the last days of this quickly-fading summer.

PS-I am sure you noticed the new blog layout, and hope you like it! I needed a little change...