What I did this summer

Well, today is the first day of school for kids here in Michigan and with that in mind I thought I would give a report on "What I Did This Summer" just like we used to have to in grade school. The Summer of 2008 went by entirely too fast as do most summers. While we had wanted to get away for a vacation - we didn't. The end of summer caught up to us from behind and surprised us. We are planning a vacation to the U.P. for next summer though. Don't worry, I'll let you know far in advance when we will have the gift basket store closed ;).

We started off the summer with a bumper crop of strawberries from our garden. A lot of time was spent harvesting berries and getting the rest of the garden up and going. Unfortunately, we had another dry summer here in southwest Michigan so that meant watering the garden on a daily basis. I missed watering the raspberry canes too often and we lost quite a few of the new plantings.

We took lots of walks with the kids amongst many visits to the local library. I finally took the time to take some photos from around White Pigeon. I had been wanting to do that for a long time and was always too busy or had another lame excuse. I finished up that photo walk with an excellent chocolate soda at the neat old soda fountain in the Tasty Nut Shop.

Blueberry picking was fun, eating Michigan cherries and peaches was tasty as always, and just plain having fun as a family. It seems that I mention food a lot. Well, I don't know about you, but a lot of my memories of summer seem to revolve around food. There's always barbecues, homemade ice cream, 4th of July parties, and evenings in front of a campfire.

My only regret is not getting away and heading up north. We'll remedy that next summer. Now we've apple picking to look forward too and all the pies, apple sauce, and apple crisp that goes along with it.

There I went talking about food again ;).