Oh what do you do in the summertime?

Do you know that song? It's a good one in the primary hymn book. Well anyway, we do a lot!!!

Apparently, I'm desperate to get out of the house because we have gone somewhere every single day since last Thursday. Mostly we've gone to the barn, but we've also been to playgroup in Stow, to see the 4th of July fireworks in Acton (Harriet didn't like them much, but the rest of us thought they were way cool), to Rita's place in New Hampshire to ride (she has 20 some-odd horses and girls sleeping over this week at her vacation house there), to Drumlin Farm, and to swimming lessons today!!!Grace has ridden at least 7 times this week that I can think of and has ridden 3 different horses. She's riding Peppe (short for Peppermint Patty) in this picture. He's her second favorite horse after Tink. She also had her first swimming lesson today which was really great. She's taking a mom and tot class and I have to get in the pool with her, so we left Harriet with our neighbor, Jeanne, across the street. It was Harriet's first time being tended by a non-family member. She did great. I found them on the porch in a rocking chair when we got back. So many firsts...I have ridden twice this week - 2 different horses! I haven't ridden since Harriet was born - in fact not since last September. So this has been a banner week for me! I even got to ride on the cross-country course on Rita's property in New Hampshire. I haven't ridden outside of a ring for at least 4 or 5 years. It was soooo fun!

Well, your memories of taking kids lots of places tend to turn into positive ones eventually, but I have to say, at the end of a long day out with babies, you really wonder if any of the effort was worth it and you begin to wish you'd just stayed home. I felt that way every single day this week. But, now that the week is over, I'm glad I did it all. What else would I have done? If I had stayed home, I would have still felt overwhelmed and tired at the end of the day, so we might as well have gone out and done something. We do have a lot to say for ourselves this week, but now I'm too tired and too far behind on house work to be able to sit down and write much about it. Hopefully, our pictures can tell the story.