Tag: Summer

The vacation post

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The world-famous Butter Cow, hand-crafted by Sarah Pratt.

Once again, I find myself penning a post about a family vacation.  This time, summer has come and gone, taking our family vacations with it.  This time, due to school starting in the middle of August (don’t ask me why), we were forced to cut our trip short by a day and decided not to go camping.  See, from what I understand, schools are not supposed to start till after Labor Day (September 3 this year), but they are allowed to apply for a waiver if they would like to begin prior to that date and the governor can either approve or deny the request.  I can’t recall him ever denying a waiver request and I can’t recall school ever beginning after Labor Day; it’s always started in August, and it starts earlier every year.  This year, our school started classes on August 15, but I know some schools were in session last week.

But I digress. Instead of going camping up north like we’d planned, we headed south, invading Seymour’s parents’ house for a few days and running ourselves ragged.

Anything and everything you could possibly want…on a stick!

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Ah summer, how near at hand is your end!

The last week has been somewhat thrilling (not always in a good way), but it will make for some nice long, newsy posts when I return from Family Vacation Extravaganza Number Three (Home of All Kinds of Food-on-a-Stick). Happy Monday, y’all! 🙂

Excitement abounds!

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You know, I’ve had something brewing in the back of my mind for quite a while now as a blog topic and some of the posts I’ve been reading lately on T.L. Tyson’s blog have more or less cemented the idea in my head.  However, I’m not sure it’s fully fermented yet and at any rate, I received an email over my lunch break that pretty much blew said idea sky-high.  Any thoughts I might have otherwise entertained posting about today were blown to smithereens when I read the following words:

…I’d love to see the whole thing…

Squee!

Happy birthday, America!

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Today is the Fourth of July.  Independence Day.  America’s birthday.  And on this day, I’ve got something to share with you.

All gave some. Some gave all. Some stood through for the red, white and blue, and some had to fall. And if you ever think of me, think of all your liberties and recall some gave all.
Photo by Kay Kauffman

The lyrics in the caption are from the Billy Ray Cyrus song, “Some Gave All.”  I’ve always loved that song and on a day like today, when we honor those who fought and died for our independence, I find those words especially fitting.

The picture is from the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

It’s five o’clock somewhere…

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It’s five o’clock somewhere, right?  Why the heck can’t it be five o’clock here?  I just want to go home and sit in my lovely air-conditioned living room and relax with my guys. *sigh*

Also, check out The Page Turner!  It’s a super cool blog run by a great gal and one of yesterday’s posts featured The Lokana Chronicles!  Needless to say, I was pretty stoked.  Be sure to check out the pages 105 Tips for Writers and A Page Turner for a look at the awesome Page Turner software.  The software isn’t live yet, but it sounds like they hope to start beta testing pretty soon.  I personally can’t wait to start playing around with it.

And now, I think I’ll try to rest my poor sun-fried brain.  It’s another scorcher out there today and another one of my kids has another ballgame tonight.  Tadpole played a doubleheader last night (won one, lost one) and Tomcat has a game tonight (not a doubleheader, thank goodness).  I missed out last night because it was too hot for Cricket and Thumper to be outside and I think I’m going to miss out tonight, too, because it’s actually hotter today than yesterday (mid-nineties for temps, heat indices in the lower triple digits, humidity levels approaching 100% – yesterday was pretty similar, but with 30-40 mph winds all day long on top of all that).  Blargh.

(c) 2012.  All rights reserved.

Phlog along, folks!

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The beautiful, if shallow, Upper Iowa River
Photo by Kay Kauffman

Once again, it’s Friday.  Once again, it’s been a crazy week.  Did I say crazy?  I think maybe cray-zay might suit a little better.  It all started Sunday.  Sunday began the first-ever Kauffman Family Camping Extravaganza.  Our adventure did not exactly get off to an auspicious start. For one thing, Seymour wanted to leave our house by 10:00 a.m. as the campground we were heading to was three hours away.  His parents were going to go with us, but they live a good hour and a half south of us, so we couldn’t leave till they arrived at our house, and they were late.  Seymour’s mama wasn’t feeling well, so his papa let her sleep in a little late and it was nearly noon by the time they made it to our house.  I think we pulled out of our driveway somewhere around 12:30 p.m.

About an hour or so into the trip, possibly a little more, one of the tires on our camper blew out in spectacular fashion.  There was no fixing this tire – it was in pieces all over the road.  I should have taken a picture of it, but I didn’t think of it at the time.  And apparently campers don’t come with spares standard the way cars do, but Seymour is a smart one and bought one when he picked up the camper, so he got the tire changed and we were soon back on the road.

The excitement continues behind the cut! Will we catch any fish? Or only weeds? Hmm, seems I’ve left that part out. Oh, well – the answer was no fish, only weeds.

Summer lovin’

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Ah, summer.  It is June, after all.  How the heck that happened, I’ll never know.  I could swear that only yesterday it was January.  Anyway, Kristen Lamb shared summertime memories of her youth in a post this afternoon and it made me smile.  I remembered some of the same years she described, but I remembered them through the eyes of a child instead of the eyes of a young woman.   Sure, by the time I was five, the Russians were no longer our enemies, but I still remember slip ‘n’ slides, spending more time outside than in, and never locking our doors. Ever.