What I Did This Summer (Pt 1)

Don’t tell anyone I gave you the heads up, but a little birdie told me summer is OVER next week. Wha-huh? How’s that possible? It’s still warm, but slowly the changes are becoming more persistent in their hint giving. I have to turn on lights when I make breakfast. I have to turn on lights during dinner sometimes, and then always after dinner in the family room. Sweaters are needed—if only in the extreme ends of the day.

Sure, we still have a month more of very warms days, but it feel like summer came and went, and it all blurred around me. Where did it go?

Upon reflection, it didn’t ‘go’. It was ahappening, Man. Right on. (Heh.) I simply was so busy going and doing, I forgot the reflecting.

So, in an attempt to catch up, we’ll pretend I have a back to school, “What I did last summer” creative writing assignment.

Four days after school was out, we flew to Virginia to go the ‘grand tour’, which means we basically visited all three corners of that (triangular) state.

First we were in Northern Viriginia (which is not really part of ‘real’ Virginia, anyway). My inlaws live there, as well as many beloved friends from ‘back in the day.’

You know something funny that happens just any old day in the summer in Virginia? It rains! A LOT. Whenever it wants. Then maybe it stops. Then begins again. How do people plan picnics when you just never know? I like being able to say we’ll be at a park on the 3rd Thursday of June in 2011 and know the weather will cooperate.

So, when it just ups and rains (how rude!), you have to find indoor things to do. Like the big indoor water recreation area in Chantilly, Cub Run Rec Center!

While my loyalties still go to the Morgan Hill Aquatic Center for pure kickassedness, this was a great find on a ‘boring’ afternoon. My kids, like most are used to a LOT of outside time, and also not used to how grownups without children living with them have so much ‘not for touching’ things all over the place. So, it was about 9 a.m. on the first day in NoVa, after a red eye, that they needed to get out and about to play.

Carter loved this slide, and Cole even started to go down it himself with only a grownup or big sister to catch him at the bottom.

There was a cool whirlpool area that Bunny loved to swirl around in.

Somehow I missed a good photo of the huge water slides, which kept Bunny busy. I went down one, and it was dark, and fast. Bunny loved how scary it was.