CHILDHOOD SUMMERS

Ahhh...to be a kid!  I remember spending awesome summer vacations on my grandparent's farm.  Helping my grandmother bang together a scarecrow for her vegetable garden, shooing all of her grandchildren away from underfoot while she prepared meals for a crew of men working in my grandfather's fields during hay season. That usually consisted of potato salad made with real home-made mayonnaise, cooked ham, her wicked homemade bread, with butter and a cup of 'real' tea which is, according to any serious East Coast teetotaler, King Cole Tea; picking string beans from the garden in large plastic bowls and after having cleaned (snapped) them all, being rewarded with a stick of Wrigley's chewing gum; sitting on my grandad's knee warm summer evenings counting fireflies, while admiring how the moon reflected off of his bald head which I was allowed to buff on occasion much to my delight; games of Ghost Down Cellar around the mulberry bush on their front lawn...a velvety green carpet gently rolling down to the mighty Miramichi River; How Many Birds In the Bush with marbles, in an old tent we kids had retrieved from some one's trash and Simon Says with the lot of us, ALL cousins, whom were loved more like sisters and brothers than they were cousins...we had our own little army of 17; the church hymns and stories of her childhood she would send me into slumber in her big brass bed with, while curtains softly danced in warm summer breezes.

SUMMER...FINALLY!

Luckily, weather has been on our side as of late.  As with every year tho, our annual community festival saw the carnival ride people pull into town bringing with them and completely anticipated as every year, lots of rain and cold.  I actually wore a fall sweater to the pet show with jeans and boots and again this year, they were calling for frost overnight...how seasonal is that?  But...as the week wore on, the sun appeared, as did balmy temperatures and now we're complaining yet again, "it's too hot"!  You can't beat an ice cold beverage on a blistering day tho, floating around in the pool, grilled dinners and warm evenings spent on the porch as the two old fogies we've become.  Work is busy, family is healthy, our little one is happy and aren't we all??  We have signs of summer!

Summer 2010 sees Lizzy's first year of soccer! Apparently (or so I'm told by my German husband), we can't have a child without some knowledge of European foosball!