When life gives you lemonade...

Cortlan has been asking to have a lemonade stand for quite a while.  I keep telling him that it is something that takes work and preparation; you can't just wake up one day and decide that you will have a lemonade stand in an hour...especially if you also want to sell cookies and you are depending on your mom to have lemonade in the house.  Last week, we finally got on the same page and got all our ducks in a row.  The most important step - I bought the lemonade.  Once that happened, everything else fell into place.

The kids made their signs.

We made chocolate chip cookies...on a 92 degree day.  And the next day, we made the lemonade.

Soon, we were ready for business.

The kids worked well together as a team, which I was happy to see.  They asked, "Would you like ice?"  And they said, "Thanks for coming!"

They sold most of the cookies...and ate the rest.  They sold about three gallons of lemonade...and drank the rest.

What are they going to do with the money?  They already put it in an envelope...they are saving in hopes of a trip to Disney.

10 weeks...

I have been quite the slacker when it comes to writing these posts.  Somehow, I always feel like I am going to have so much more time to do things like this in the summer.  But that just isn't the case.

Sometimes, I feel that we put our lives on hold for 42 weeks of the year and we have to live it all in these 10 short weeks of summer.  Considering all that we do and accomplish in the school year, I realize that isn't true, but the contrast of feeling like everything is a balancing act (and a tough one at that) during the school year versus the freedom to just do things in the summer is a stark one.  And we always seem to put things off until the summer.  And then most of those things don't get done, anyway, because, well, it is only 10 weeks, after all.  And when you spend your time at the pool, at the zoo, at family picnics, at the museums, riding bikes, running, going to gymnastics, and catching fireflies, it is hard to tackle those major projects.

I just haven't figured out how to maintain this casual and free feeling into the school year, when I have about 50+ hours a week less time to do all of the things that I am enjoying these days, plus the things I don't enjoy so much, like cleaning and grocery shopping.  And this year is going to be a doozy...with Cortlan and Everly in two different schools, with two different days and times for gymnastics and soccer, with my fall play stuff, with John's federation stuff...and then Cortlan's allergist recommended that he get allergy shots once a week. (I am still trying to figure out which day that would work.)

But the bottom line is that we are having a great summer and we are so lucky to have these 10 weeks to spend together and make great memories.  The kids spent a good bit of time arguing and making me crazy for a while, but that has lessened considerably in the last week.  We still have a great beach vacation to look forward to, and plenty more time to enjoy the summer life.

And enjoy, we will...

Summer reading...and loving.

I finally picked up a book this summer.  It has been a while, and boy do I miss the days of laying around and reading whenever I felt like it.  We have been on the go quite a bit and have been having a ton of fun (more to come on all of that).

Anyway, I am reading Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer, simply because I found it recently on my shelf and remembered that a friend had lent it to me last year.  I should give it back, but there is a reason that I have it.  I am a bit more than halfway through, and am not 100% sure how I feel about it yet...I find it intriguing and somehow personal.

But I just read a line that caught my attention, and I just wanted to write it down.  I want to think about it some more later.

"It's the tragedy of loving, you can't love anything more than something you miss."

Thought-provoking.