I'd like another three months of summer, please. Thank you.

So my sister tells me I haven't blogged enough lately.

Hmm.

This was at my nephew's wife's baby shower.  (When I tell people I'm about to become a great aunt, they're all "Oh, um, is that a good thing?"  Yes.  He's 27.  It's okay.)  One of the other guests was another sister's childhood friend  I haven't seen her in, oh, 20 years or so.  She turns to me and says, "So, how did Jon's interview in Dundee go?"  Seriously?  How do people do that?  After looking forward to happy hour with my own childhood friends for a few weeks, I completely forgot about it on the day of, and was in the middle of making dinner when it suddenly dawned on me.  I can't keep the details of my own life straight; how come some people can keep up on peripheral acquaintances?

What else.

This summer has involved far less camping, hiking, and swimming than I would have liked.  But it's been a good time anyway.  Here's my idea of a good time:  I took the kids to the library, where we hit the limit on books you can check out (100, in case you were curious, but it was only because they hadn't checked back in the ones we'd returned on our way in), read three books aloud, then pulled bikes out of the back of the truck and rode around the little lakes in the library's park. Well, I sat and read my new murder mystery (or as Inesa calls them, "Mama's killing books") while they kids made loops and checked in.  Then we came home and made and ate dinner.  Inesa and I did the dishes, Sasha played with Legos, they went outside and rode bikes with the neighbor kids for a half hour, then they came in for "family time."  I dug out an ESL game I printed out in 2009.  It's a basic roll and advance game, and each square has a category, such as "sea animals" or "things to do in winter." When you land on it, you say four items from that category.   Somehow this morphed into doing charades of your four things.  It was awesome.


Jon wasn't feeling well, so he was laying down for most of this, but he rallied around they time we finished our game.  (He would have been great at charades--we'll have to play again.)  I read six stories to the kids, then Inesa went up to brush her teeth and Sasha went out to help Daddy clean out the newly emptied wine barrel.  Inesa asked for a hand massage and lullabies from me.  When the boys finished their project, Jon and Sasha played hide and seek with Sasha's stuffed animals.  Apparently, if one stuffed animal can't find the other, they set out some invisible grass (for Spot the Reindeer or Fluffy the Buffalo) or meat (for Tiger the Tiger or Tiny the enormous dog), and pounce on them when they inevitably fall for the bait.  The kids fell asleep.  Yay, us.