My favorite day

June 1st has always held a special place in my heart as my favorite day of the year. To me, it was the "first" day of summer, holding so much promise of fun things to come. Rob and I always made a Summer Fun List, with things like:
*Camp
*Drive-in movie
*Summerfest
*Zoo
and on and on....

And although things have changed over the years with the addition of our children, many of the same things still make our summer list, with a few additions like:
*Chuck E Cheese
*Slip N Slide
*Lemonade Stand
and on and on.....

This summer will be the longest summer in school history for my kids. We got out very early this year, and because of some construction are starting quite late, so we will have over 3 full months off of school. All the more reason to try to make this as full of a summer as we can. We kicked off our June 1st with an outing to the pool.

Here's to a long hot summer filled with days like this.

School's out for summer!

Don't tell me you don't have that song running through your head now.

To kick off summer break, we prepared by giving Jack a summer haircut.

Before:

After:

I do like the curls but he seems quite pleased with the new do.

Oh lessee, what else. We went camping over Memorial weekend, looked something like this:

Look Mom and Dad, the e Coli notice about this lake isn't bothering us! Oh, what's that? What's that brown stuff on my legs, you ask? Hmm, not sure....

{Is it bad parenting to let them wade in a lake with an e coli warning? I mean, it's not like it was so bad they closed the beach area... maybe don't answer that one}

Bacon and eggs for breakfast.. yummy

The hike that started with high hopes, a request by Jack that it be 2 hours long, a notebook headed "Things Luke and I find on our hike", a camera to capture those things, turned into... "I'm hot! This long grass is itching my legs! Can we turn around? I changed my mind, let's make it 10 minutes! Will you carry me? Please?"

And, of course, we had the prerequisite storm while we camped. It is actually written into our contract-our camping agent is very clear that when he books a camping gig for us, it must involve serious storms where we at some point comtemplate how safe we really are in a tent in a field with that level of lightning and thunder. So, CHECK! Got it!

All in all, we have always harbored a love of camping, and although the face of it has changed drastically over the years and with a family, still delivers much of what we expect.

Oh, and one more thing! I got a new vacuum. My 1995 Wal Mart $60 vacuum can now R.I. P.

My new Hoover Windtunnel

This is SOOOO gross. This is how much I got on my first vacuum of my main floor and the upstairs. I couldn't believe it!