The last hurrah

Summer is winding down. It's a sad fact but one that I must face. I started thinking; "What have we been doing for the past 3 months?", so I looked at my pictures. There is the photographic evidence that we actually had fun. Sure there was some fighting, crying and yelling (both on my part and on the kids as well) but all in all we had a great summer!

Hope you enjoy looking at the pictures as much as we had posing for them!

Filling the pool

A cool morning on my porch

Sleeping on a pirate ship

Welcome Summer!

Catching "flier flies" with new friends

A bug catcher (and a goof!)

Climbing mountains

He's still my little boy

Marty's idol

John L. Porter designer of the Iron Clad CSS Virginia

Fireworks for The 4th of July

Complete with popcorn and root beer

Lazy days

Favorite Ipod spot

Arts & Crafts

Colonel William Crawford, founder of Portsmouth

Our waterway

Hog Island Fresnel Lens

The Railroad Museum of Virginia

Making dinner with Dad

One of the many nights they slept on the porch

Marty explaining artifacts at the

Portsmouth Naval Shipyard Museum

Lightship Portsmouth Museum

Standing in the Hollow Mast

A very hot day!

City Park

My baby's growing up

Having fun

Norfolk Botanical Gardens

Mermaid statue

It should have said

"Beware of Mamma"

Huckleberry Finn and Becky Thatcher

Tree stump maze

Taking a break

This is what I'll miss most about summer:

The best part of our vacation is most of these pictures were taken right in my own backyard. We love living in Portsmouth, there is so much to do and see here (we didn't even scratch the surface!).

I start back to work tomorrow and we have an open house for the kids school Tuesday so I guess this is really it.

Back to the grind.

Next week I'll post pictures of their first day at school and probably of me crying. But I am looking forward to having some time to myself. I just wish it didn't come at the expense of their childhood.

Happy Monday Everyone!

Kathy

Conflicted

They're driving me crazy today.

There I said it! Most days it's fine but today is my day to be short tempered and impatient. Today is their day to not listen and push my buttons. While I was brushing my teeth I was sadly thinking that I only have a few more weeks with them before school starts. I don't know how I'm going to get through the first day when I drop them off. The last 3 years I have taken Louisa to breakfast right after we dropped Marty off at his first day of school. Who am I going with this year? Who's going to help me punch my time card on my first day back to work? Louisa was always there with me, now who is going to reach up on their tippy toes and pull the handle for me?

Then I came downstairs and my two sweet babies had been replaced by two little monsters. "She hit me." "Because you called me butt face." "We need to go, we're going to be late." "Why does he always get to go first?" "Because I like him better." "I know you don't like him better, you're just saying that. He hit me again." "I didn't hit you. I tapped you." "Well stop tapping your sister." "Hey, she hit me back." "I tapped you too!" "Will you both please stop hitting or I'm going to hit you!!!"

Quiet in the car because they're pissed at Mamma. So I'm thinking again, what am I going to do with all that time? Who am I going to eat lunch with? "Get your feet off of me!!!" "You started it!"

I guess it's going to be like this for the next 26 days.

How did my sweet children go from this:

To this???

It happened in a blink of an eye, while I wasn't looking!

One minute I'm crying because my kids are going back to school the next I sending the little creeps to their rooms! I think it's a plan, it's so you'll want to send them out into the world. Go, for heaven's sake just go! But please come back; come back soon and tell me all you have learned. But be quiet because your giving me a headache with all that talking! Need me but not all the time, just when I need to be needed.

Today I went to get a cup of coffee from a little shop downtown. While we were sitting there I looked out the window and saw a lady wheeling a suitcase down the sidewalk and put it in her car. I told the kids, "See that lady with the suitcase? She's running away from home because her kids are driving her crazy. See the big smile on her face??". Don't think I'm too mean because I mess with my kids so much the don't believe anything I tell them. They both just laughed and said she wouldn't leave her kids! Yea, right!

But I know she (I) would come back because you can't live without your heart. Even if your heart gives you attacks every now and again.

Kathy

Louisa's world

Sometimes when I take a picture I find there are a number of saved pictures I didn't take. Louisa, who is 5, likes to take the camera and capture little pieces of her world. At first I was erasing them but then I decided I liked seeing things from her perspective.