The dog days are over

We had a pretty laid back summer. The most under-scheduled summer we’ve ever had, actually.

It wasn’t on purpose, it just turned out that way due to my own poor planning. Before I knew it, summer was here, camps were full, airline tickets for five were pricey and my options were limited. It will go down in (at least my) memory as our old school summer.

Instead of Disney or Destin we did the Pleasure Pier in Galveston.

The kids didn’t attend a computer camp or go to weekly Kumon classes, but they did go to a week of VBS and made regular trips to the library.

They pulled weeds in the yard to earn some cash. They brainstormed ways to build a robot. They drew architectural plans for their Minecraft houses. They created a baseball diamond in the field by our house (until the torrential rain came and washed it all away). They made a man cave in the garage. They practiced their hockey trick shots in the street and sharpened their puck-flipping skills.They did some Superman-style belly flops on the Slip ‘n Slide in the backyard. They made a gazillion wallets out of duct tape.

There was plenty of I’m-bored-there’s-nothing-to-do whininess, followed by me listing off a ton of really boring things for them to do and then later finding the dog like this,

but all-in-all they did a pretty good job of occupying themselves most of the time.

Wet suits and bare feet, the boys ride home shirtless from the pool on a bike with an almost-flat tire.

And as I was uploading my first day of school pictures

6th, 4th, and 3rd

I found a ton of others on my phone of our old school summer. Like this one on our way to Galveston.

The moat we made

and the hermit crab we found.

The crabs we hunted on the beach at night by the light of our iPhone’s

and the make-you-sick-to-your-stomach carnival rides.

The tiny snail Nicholas found on our porch one morning.

Car shows (and Ryan’s favorite shirt, apparently),

fishing,

fishing,

and more fishing.

Rope-swinging and roof-jumping at the lake for the Fourth of July,

learning to kayak,

and even more fishing.

And the crash course in cooking that the boys came up with — they made a list of all the things they wanted to cook, I agreed to find the recipes and buy the ingredients and they did all the work.

The only way they’ll eat popcorn now.

We celebrated the end of summer with a wasp sting to the face

and seeing Weird Al in concert.

It was simple and sweet, but probably one of the most memorable summers we’ll ever share. Old school-style.