Summer Break

As I sat down to post my weekend pictures, I noticed the last posting date for this blog. Apparently I took summer break literally. I stopped doing all my regular life and went into vacation mode.

We had a great summer. We drove west and saw beautiful farm land, tried Wisconsin cheese, put pennies on the railroad tracks to get flattened and actually entered North Dakota.

We met up with Jim's parents and brother Joe and family in the Mount Rushmore area. We saw beautiful mountains, fascinating caves, fed the wild donkeys,

and dug for mammoth bones.

We then headed west again and ended up in Oregon at Honeymon park with our Lathen relatives. There we played on the sand dunes, explored tide pools, rode inner tubes behind the boat, and ate delicious clam chowder.

Our next stop took us east again to the Atkinson camping reunion.

There we cooled off in the creek, enjoyed mountain walks,

played lots of card games and missed having Jim there.

After a time in Idaho we stayed the night in Provo with Amberly and picked up Marybeth to begin the long drive home. Marybeth then joined us for a beautiful day playing on the New Jersey beach before she had to head back home.

To finish off the year a few of us went to camp (scouts, young women, basketball), we all (except Jim) slept in a lot of days, took a weekend trip (Jim included) to Maryland to visit friends and the temple and went shopping to be ready for the school year. Now summer is over and we just had our labor day camping trip. School has begun and kids after school activities begin next week. Valerie is doing piano and volleyball, Nic football, volleyball and organ lessons, Kiley violin, girl scouts and field hockey, Arielle piano gymnastics and girl scouts and Bella girl scouts and gymnastics. Lilly and I go to the gym and hang out and take naps together. Jim goes to work and is busy some days, and not so other days. So now that life is back to a schedule, maybe I'll get back to this more regularly, just like my sister told me to.