The End Of Summer

I can not believe we have one day left of our official summer vacation. It feels like it hasn't even yet begun, and here we are getting ready to send the oldest 3 kids to school on Tuesday. How does this happen? Year after year it seems that summers are just getting shorter and shorter.

Every summer, we have a list of must-do items that we'll accomplish over those short months. This year's list was extremely shortened compared to most years due to our move and my pregnancy. But we did do pretty good at getting most things crossed off the list.

However, there was one big item still on that list as we headed into our last week of summer vacation - a trip to the Detroit Zoo.

Since that last week also coincided with our need to start our earlier bedtime and morning routines, we purposely chose a day when we would all get up with our alarms and be out of the house at the same time we'll have to leave for school. In fact, this little plan worked so well that we've decided to make the timing of the trip a yearly tradition. (Although Isabelle did request that we try to not go on a 90+ degree day next year.)

Why is that we can separate the kids and get some great pictures of them either in a small group or one-on-one?

But put them all together and we end with a series like this...



I am thankful that they seem to lose that little habit when we try to take the very rare family photo though.
And if the kids had it their way, this little fellow would have become a part of that family photo too. He joined us for lunch, got up close and personal and even brought a few friends for a visit.
This was the highlight of the whole day for the kids. I think we'll be talking about our lunch with the peacocks for years to come.

Now to enjoy our last day of this amazing summer. I may not be ready for school to start again, but I am definitely ready for the crisp, cool days of sweater weather!