And now for something completely different

Tuesday in the house it was hot. Craig reminded me of this several times after dinner and I felt it while I was doing my exercise in the living room in the evening. Shew.
Yesterday I wore a sweatshirt around the house it was so chilly all day and today I wore one until I started putting together a shelf for the girls' room and then when I had two babies and a four year old climbing all over me while I was trying to hammer and screw things together, I finally took it off, but anyway, point being it officially hit below 60 outside and so I guess now I can officially say that our summer is over.
Yellow leaves litter our lawn minutes after Craig mows it, that's a tell-tale sign that Fall is coming. Obviously school has been in full swing for almost a month, I saw my breath when I was running (in the rain) the other morning, and when I went outside to check the mail today I was hit full on in the face with the enchanting smell of autumn. Summer may not be officially over for another week, but it's checked out of the hotel for the year. I DO really love fall, but it's always also mixed with a fair amount of melancholy as summer waves goodbye. Routine. Structure. Regret at everything you had planned on getting done and didn't. But also satisfaction with all the good memories that took their place and the anticipation of all the fun things October, November, and December have to offer.
I realize I didn't blog about half of what we did this summer, and unfortunately I didn't take as many pictures as I usually do, but I did just enjoy the moment a lot more. Living in real life is better than pictures.
We didn't travel a lot except for an amazing trip to Montana for an Ellingson family reunion. Craig's aunt and uncle have a farm near Great Falls- we all camped in the backyard, rode horses, sang songs, spent the day at a mountain lake fishing, boating, and swimming, and made pots! Craig's uncle is an incredible artist and has spent his life teaching and making beautiful works of pottery. He showed us all how to throw a pot from the wheel to the kiln- we made some fun ones and we use them for oatmeal some mornings now just for fun.
Here's a couple of pictures from the trip:

 We had a hoe-down in the barn- the kids had fun dancing and the Ellingson elders had fun singing all the "real" lyrics to "Clementine". That was entertaining.

 Making pots! Uncle A had fun helping the kids make their own pots.

 The girl's and I started a craft club while we were there. Here we are making friendship bracelets. :-)

 Fun at the beautiful lake!!

 I love this girl!

 Thumbs up.

 Linus spent almost two hours out on the lake with Cousin C: thankfully they caught something, I was afraid Linus would get out there and then throw a huge fit if they didn't (he had sort of a hard time the whole trip...well, really the whole summer, but being away from a regular routine and in a new place with lots of things to get into trouble, it was rough). We asked C how he did out there because Linus's attention span gets about 15 min. max, so two hours was a long time to be occupied in a boat. He kind of looked at us and then said, "Well...he asked a lot of questions." Yes, yes he does ask a lot of questions. Guess talking your ear off is better than screaming fits, right?

 

 Yeah, I'm married to that. 

 Paintball wars. They set up a whole getup in the field behind the barn and basically sat behind barricades for about ten minutes at a time, then everyone would get up and run around the field and shoot each other all at once, then come back and reload. Repeated several times.

 Watching him from Uncle A's large authentic WWII German truck in front of the field at a safe distance.

 Playing Nazi soldiers in the car.

 So after you throw a pot, as it is called, on the wheel, then you have to let it sit for a couple of days to dry. When it is done drying, then you paint it, then you let it sit in the kiln for half an hour, then you throw it in a closed container with dry kindling to start a fire, then immediately pull it out and douse it in water. This creates a metallic, oxidized look to the pain on the outside of the pot- it was really cool to go through the whole process.

 Can't have camping without archery. Chloe LOVED it.

 And someone invited the Three Amigos along for the ride.

 It really was a beautiful spot of land and we saw some spectacular sunsets in the evenings.

It was a really fun trip and it was fun to get to meet some of the Ellingson family I haven't interacted with a whole lot. Plus cousins. The kids LOVE playing with their cousins. Linus still tells me all the time that Cousin J is his best friend.
The rest of the summer we spent just gearing up for the start of school. August 8th Linus had surgery on his magical bump!! It was finally time to get rid of what we thought was a cyst above his left eyebrow. Actually, it wasn't really a cyst- it's called a dermoid, about 1 in a 100 kids is born with it, just a pocket of leftover skin cells from when his skull bones were growing together in embryo. And no, they didn't find teeth and hair in there. :-) 
Here is a last shot of the "unicorn" before we went in.

 Doin' good, Mom. Don't bother me, I'm breathing here.

 Also Chloe and I had the opportunity to have a Mommy/Daughter date. My step-dad invited me and Chloe to come to a family excursion to go see Oklahoma at the Central City Opera House in Central City with he and my mom and his sisters during their family reunion. It was so much fun and afterwards Chloe and I went out to eat together and then went shopping at Target for some new school clothes. This was the only shot we got, but we had fun!

 On our last "summer" excursion to Grandma in Denber's house, we spent the day in the pool having fun. Actually, we're hoping we can do one more pool day before September is over, but it keeps getting chillier every day and I'm wondering if that's going to happen. Craig had fun being a goon-bucket, as usual....

And now I'm mostly all caught up.