August 16th, 2010

I have been dreading this day for over 2 months.  The last day before school started.  It has been a fantastic and frustrating summer.  It is the summer of loving having a vegetable garden, the summer of the disturbing BP oil spill, the summer of the girls becoming obsessed with the Ryan Seacrest show on the radio and all the top 40 songs, the summer Mel Gibson’s phone conversation skills went public, the summer Lauren learned to swim and Sydney discovered her love for the pool, the summer I got into following celebs on Twitter, the summer Sally went to the Mayo clinic, the summer we took Lauren to see Wicked at the Fox and she became slightly obsessed, the summer Elson went blind, and the summer I wanted to freeze in time because I was having so much fun with the girls right at the age they are now.  This summer the girls and I squandered much time playing in the garden and swimming at the pool and it felt great.  So the last day of our lazy days of summer we did just that.

  

We discovered a huge zucchini in the garden.  We had no idea it was there growing! It was our first zucchini, so we were excited.

We went to the pool and it just happened Lauren’s friend Madeline, her mom, and sister that is Sydney’s age were there too.  We all hung out together at the pool for the afternoon.  We even stayed later than normal, not getting home until 3, but it was worth it.

For dinner I made a mushroom risotto, but used an Italian grain called Farro instead of Arborio rice.  I also made a salad with a red pepper from our garden. So it was a great ending to my favorite time of the year.