Is it always like this at the end of summer?
In August we took our first camping trip. The day that we spent with my mom on the river was lovely. The night, tucked into our wonderful new tent, was not so great. It was colder than expected and our little bambino was not a happy camper. We bagged it and arrived home at 4 am. We are not bested, however, and will make it back into the woods...just not this summer.
Ben is galloping and garbling along at a very fast clip. Words are exploding forth and we’re doing our best to decipher them. Some are easy: nana=banana. Some a little trickier: bope=boat. But also sometimes bath. His little legs can’t keep up and he often finds himself tumbling down the stairs, a hill, or out of the swing. This little kid has resilience, I’ll give him that much. We are enjoying the new mobile, vocal adventures of our little 18-month old bambino.
That’s a picture of me doing the final sanding on the railing with the belt sander. As my dad always says before lending me this particular piece of equipment: “don’t forget to tuck your shirt in before turning this sucker on” (or words to the same effect). He speaks from experience: I think it sucked his shirt up into the belt one time and did a merry sanding job on his abdomen. Good advice, Papa. Fortunately, it was an easy job: the railing is as smooth as a baby’s bottom and my abs remained un-sanded.
The most excellent news is that the tank was in fabulous condition, with nary a hole, leak, hydrocarbon odor, or stained soil. Whoo to the hoo hoo. This environmental scientist will be filing for a closure report stat.
Next year we’re going to take a trip down to Donner Lake in California to spread his ashes in the mountains where he went every summer for fifty-odd years. I can’t wait to show Chris and Ben my old stomping grounds.
We kind of got out of our family weekend outings but we’ve renewed our efforts and have been rewarded with some fun little jaunts. One of our favorites was a picnic in the park, watching the kites in Magnuson Park.
Well, I think that should do it, my dears. We are looking forward to Fall (although not too much, as we still need to install our new furnace) and all the adventures that await in the coming months.
Hope you are well.
xxoo,
Sonja