Posted by J. on September 22nd, 2007
Here it is, the last day of summer. I’ve gone back to work, Oscar has started “baby school,” and Matt has finished the outline of his next script. It’s been a rough few weeks, quite frankly, but I think we’re settling back into the routine. I thought it would be nice to reflect on the summer as we define it–those glorious 11 weeks between mid-June and early September–with a photo review.
I’ll skip June since I did some blogging and picture posting back then. We spent many days playing at the park and, of course, with Buster:


We also spent a lot of time with “the kids,” my nieces and nephews. My parents, sister, Matt and I took them to the Detroit Zoo on rare family outing. The other kids really enjoyed it, and Oscar had fun with them, but the animals were generally too far away and too slow for him to get very excited about it. Anyhow, here’s the crew at the zoo:

At some point Oscar had his first [real] haircut (i.e. not from grandma). We took him to a place that is especially for kids and overpriced, but fun. It went well because they had a computer mouse for him to hold and animal crackers to eat:

We decided to take a vacation close to home in hopes of saving some money. First we spent a few days in Chicago. We could have done a better job of planning/budgeting, but it wasn’t too bad. We definitely had fun. Here we are in Chicago walking to Shedd Aquarium:

It was ungodly hot and humid the whole time we were there. We also went to the Children’s Museum at Navy Pier, and hit some of the renowned food places. Then we drove about two hours back east/north into Michigan and stayed in South Haven for a few days. South Haven is the blueberry capital of…the world? Michigan? I can’t remember. Anyhow, we spent some time at the beach and I can honestly say it is one of the best beaches I have ever been to in terms of convenience, cleanliness, water swimmability, etc. The weather was perfect for beach going, too. Matt and Oscar flew kites.

We came home with five pounds of delicious blueberries, so in addition to having lots of snackable fruit, I made us homemade blueberry spread, blueberry jam, and a blueberry crumble pie.


Both were even more delicious than they look. I ended up buying more blueberries from a local farmer’s market a few weeks later to make more jam, but it wasn’t nearly as tasty.
I also worked on the house throughout the summer. I painted this image on Oscar’s wall, which finally put the finishing touch in his room:

I also worked on making the office more organized and functional. Here are the before images from March:


In that second image I’m not sure you get the full effect of how bad it was, but the closet doors were permanently open because there was an exercise machine in the room and double stroller that were a pain in the ass to move when the doors were closed. Here’s the after:


It was a process, but it’s as done now as it’s going to get and it’s much more comfortable around here now. The living had some work as well, but I haven’t taken the after photos of that room yet.
I am also very close to finishing the blanket, even though I forgot to bring enough parts to work on it while we were on vacation. I’ve got two more rows left to sew on, then just the crochet border. I haven’t had much energy or time to work on it lately, unfortunately.
I also spent some time driving myself crazy over a job interview and offer. Ultimately I’m still where I was, and for now, I think that’s a good thing.
All in all, it was a pretty great summer. I’m sad to see it go, but time marches on.
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