Summer's closing.

The sunflowers are up.  This is always my sign that the summer is coming to a close.  It's always a bittersweet time for me when I see these flowers because they are my favorite, but it means my life(and my children's lives for that matter) is going to becoming scheduled again, with places to be and things to do.  And this year is especially bittersweet for me as we are entering Jordan's senior year in high school.  How did that happen?  One week until school begins.  So welcome lovely flower, farewell beautiful summer. 

With school starting soon, so has practice for the fall musical for Kenzie.  This year's musical is Grease

and I think it is fair to say that our whole family has Freddy my Love memorized.  Kenzie has been practicing over and over and over the last few weeks.  I think she'll make an awesome Marty Maraschino!  Really, she sounds pretty dang good on the song.  The great thing is though that there really is not stess this year because for sure she'll make ensemble and if she doesn't get Marty, well, she is only a sophomore.

This summer has been an especially wet one for our area.  While we always have Monsoon season and get some scattered thunderstorms, this year it has been slightly different because the rains seem to be never ending.  While no one in our area will ever complain that we have too much moisture and we appreciate the lovely green that is still everywhere, I think we are all ready for monsoon season to end.  Realistically, we probably have at least another month...but perhaps it will be more like our normal monsoons for the next month or so.

Because of the rain, the boys have been able to play in the river in their kayaks for much longer than expected.  This past weekend Brad, Jordan and Ben hit Rockwood Box canyon  in their kayaks for the first time.  

We had a brief respite from the monsoon rains this past Saturday and McKenzie and I, along with one of our Fenberg favorites (Mary) went on a local hike.  The views were beautiful.

And the time spent with these beautiful, fun girls....

was time well spent.  Especially love my Kenzie girl.

Blue seems to be adapting well to our family.  He is growing bigger every day and has such a calm demeanor.  So different than Harley, the lab that we had a few years back.

I am reading a book called the Happiness project that I couldn't get into at first.  But once I hit chapters 2-4...I found some really valuable material.

My favorite quotes from it so far are the following two:

"Happy people generally are more forgiving, helpful, and charitable, have better self-control, and are more tolerant of frustration than unhappy people, while unhappy people are more often withdrawn, defensive, antagonistic, and self-absorbed.  Oscar Wilde observed, "One is not always happy when one is good; but one is good when one is happy."

"I've never forgotten something I read in college, by Pierre Reverdy: "There is no love; there are only proofs of love."  whatever love I might feel in my heart, others will see only my actions."

Finally...our grillzebo is "practically perfect in every way" (Imagine Mary Poppins singing that).  Really, it is.  We are loving the time it affords us to eat outside now.  With the fire pit, the side counter, the barbeque and the roof it provides the conduit for many conversations to be had as we spend time together as a family.

We are still adding a few finishing touches, but it is the perfect addition to our house.