Summer Lovin'

Where has the summer gone?
I can't deny I'm ready for Autumn, but I'm incredibly sad to see what used to be the lazy daze of Summer about to wave good-bye.
I've had such good intentions of posting regularly, reading regularly. I even had scads and scads of witty repartee to impart. But, alas, intentions are only intentions without action, aren't they?

This has been a Summer of....
first serious(kinda) relationships for my two oldest children, real heartache among their friends, health scares for some of my friends (a reminder that my daily pitiful complaints are oh, so petty), an amazing Creation Festival with an outstanding group of teenagers (not to mention that the adults became wayyy too comfortable laughing until we cried over bodily functions, porta-potties and do girls really fart, ahem, they do), the annual battle of Japanese Beetle vs. hapless hubby, a boy calling my youngest daughter (!!!!), regular trips to Chubby's BBQ for a Southern food fix, poring over a ginormous stack of must-do's for my oldest to go to college, a lengthy trip to Alaska where my crew was loved on by a wonderful Evangelical Baptist church filled with spunky elderly women who fed us until we nearly burst( sang to us, prayed over us, while we shimmied up to give them a new roof), hey~I roofed, I got up there and pounded it (go me!), worked with a great group of young people and adults from Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee, Michigan, Virginia, New Mexico, Maryland and Massachusetts, got a rare glimpse of Mt. McKinley's summit, saw glaciers which are an amazing blue hue, sent mail back home from North Pole, AK, started Weight Watchers which is by, turns, either wonderful or spiteful depending upon whether I'm retaining water or the scale is being hateful or I've had a crazy wild drop on weight, got into business with a dear friend of mine (we share a birthday, holla Susan!) and am tentatively feeling my way through it all, picked out paint for the stairway and entryway which I'm hoping to tackle once school starts, AM DROPPING MY OLDEST AT COLLEGE ON SUNDAY (dayum I'm old), celebrating my birthday on Monday, my daughter's on Tuesday and my husband's a week after that, soccer practice is underway and I'm getting entirely too girly, giggly excited about my upcoming trip to Phoenix for Creative Escape (really, we're going to have such a good time, it should be illegal. In fact, I'm certain that in the town I went to HS in, it probably is).

Yes, it happened so fast.