Summer things

I love (love, love love!!!!!) summer vacation. I've been out of school for three weeks now and I can finally sleep past 5:30AM. If that were the only change between summer and the school year, it would be worth it. I get to talk more with Derek because I (usually) don't fall asleep at 9PM.

But we've done some other fun things this summer....

Elsa made her first trip out to feed the ducks at the park. Luckily, the ducks get fed by a lot of people because every time we gave her a small piece of bread to feed to the ducks, she ate it. In her defense, she does usually get her bread given to her in duck size portions.



Elsa also got eat an ice cream cone after we fed the ducks. Good times!


I'm taking a graduate class and I am 95% sure that it is the last class I'll take. (It's a class in surveying and public opinion and let me tell you, 95% is a pretty high level of certainty. I now have the facts to back that up.) It's online, so I can do the work whenever I want to. Yeah. It's online, so pretty much every time I have some free time, there's work to do for my class. Yuck. A lot of the discussion for the class is online and my group has ended up being almost nonfunctional, so I'm typing up a lot of assignments and putting them in cyberspace and I have no idea whatsoever if they're any good. I'm frustrated and pretty quickly started channeling my inner teenager, who tells me to do the least amount of low quality work I think I can get by with.

I've made it to the gym at least twice a week for the last three weeks. I'm no elite athlete yet, but that's twice as much as I had been going before.

I've scored some great loot at garage sales. I'm not a great garage sale shopper. Mostly I think you end up paying too much money for other people's junk. I have enough junk and I already own it. But then I had a baby girl and I realized that she was going to need to wear clothes EVERY DAY. And then I discovered that she was going to eat like she was in training for a competitive eating contest and would grow out of her clothes in about five minutes. And suddenly, buying almost new clothes at 80% off their original prices made it worth pawing through other people's junk. I've been to many bad, gross garage sales this year, but on Friday, I found a great one. Elsa got clothes for the fall--a dress, some boots, jeans, a skirt, three shirts and pjs. I got two sweaters, two t-shirts and a light jacket. At another garage sale, I got a brand new winter coat (like I had been looking for since last October). Total spent at the two sales? $16.

Speaking of my girl, she is eating everything in sight and will walk on her own any day now. I usually feed her first in the evening and then I eat my dinner after her. She had already eaten dinner one night and saw me eating some salad. She took three steps over to me and went straight for my bowl. Grandpa Wes--Carter may walk for dollar bills, but we think that all you need to do is hold out food in front of Elsa.

I went in with Elsa last week to get her one year old pictures taken. A woman came in with her twins. She brought her own props: a wading pool, a pair of angel wings for each twin, several books and stuffed animals and a grocery sack full of things I couldn't even see. Can you imagine taking your own wading pool to a picture place?

Derek took today off from work and we are finally going to work on our new back deck. Even though Derek has known me for a long time, he seems to think that I will be able to help in this endeavor. He knows that I can't even hang a picture alone, but the phrase "You can help mix and pour the concrete for the footings" escaped his mouth. With good instruction, I can do just about anything, but I really need good instructions.

I went out to the state park in Louisville this weekend to see my friend, Julie, from Colorado. She was here with her girls visiting family and Elsa and I had a good time seeing them.

So that's the summer so far--it's going too quickly but it has been fun.