Wow, that was fast

Getting through the last couple of weeks of my coursework mostly entailed me daydreaming of the post-exam time when I would have all the time in the world to soak up the last few days of summer. So this is a very bad time indeed to instead feel like I've been hit by a Mack truck. I honestly feel like I have mono or something - cannot for the life of me get going. I am assuming this is mostly due to the fact that Mallory, who was down to one night waking prior to our camping trip, has ramped that number up into the 2-4 range for the past month. That doesn't make it any easier to bear though, and it's definitely cramping my style. It is really sinking in now that holy crap, the summer's almost over. We will miss it when it's gone, so I want to be making the most of our time now: getting out to Mitchell's Bay a few more times, going to Erieau at least once (at one time I thought we'd be there once a week - ha! ha!), and now that I have finally gotten around to buying poor Mallory a bathing suit (bad, tardy Mommy!), getting her into a swimming pool at least once this year. August has just whizzed by; with our camping trip and a week of Chad's vacation, then a few weeks of bad weather that weren't entirely suitable for outdoor, summery pursuits, but were busy nonetheless (we went to a magic show and a train show sponsored by our local railroad museum, did the OEYC drop-in thing a few times, and we've been on a baking spree, first churning through recipe after recipe of blueberry muffins and blueberry pancakes and then, when our blueberry-picking reserves dried up, we moved onto the chocolate: chocolate chip muffins, chocolate revel bars...) The nice days that we have had are the ones that pass in the blink of an eye. One day a couple of weeks ago, we spent an entire morning out for a walk. We stopped to watch a million ants gobble up a spilled Slurpee for nearly half an hour. We went to the park to play on the new climbing equipment there and spy on the day camp kids. On the way home, we stopped at 'the snack store', as Liam calls it (what was it really? - Tim Horton's!) for a muffin and a milk - presto, all the makings of a very worthy outing. When I was a kid, the thought of 8-10 weeks of vacation prior to the start of another school year was agony: how on earth was I going to fill the time? Now, I can't believe how fast it goes. Life seems to speed up the older you get. I feel like I have one foot in the grave already.

(A group shot from another recent rainy-day pursuit: a trip to Stratford to see Gramma and Grampa and my cousin Kelly's family. I don't know about you Kelly, but out of the 20 or so shots I took, this one is the best!)