Summertime!

Greetings!
I seem to have once again dropped the ball on doing better about updating the blog. No more promises. . . but I will try!
We are in the middle of summer here in Memphis. It's hot. REALLY hot. I felt much guilt about sending Lou to Scout Camp today. I volunteered there yesterday, and I was positively done for when I got home.

The camp is actually being held at Fisherville Girl Scout Camp, about 20 minutes from our house. I bring this up because this is where one of my most vivid childhood memories came from. Our family had moved here from Rouses Point, New York a year or two before, and I had already come to the conclusion that Memphis summers were probably about as close to the dark side as one could get, and usually came in concert with chicken pox or nose-splitting allergies. This particular summer, my mother sent me to Fisherville Girl Scout Day Camp, where upon arrival, I was handed a post hole digger, taken to a field of tall grass, and told to go and dig my own "latrine", which I did. After completion of the hole, MacGyver appeared with an actual commode, set it on the hole, and with a rather mind-boggling array of plastic garbage bags, rope and coat hangers, configured a "privacy area" around it. Yes, I still harbor a grudge. Yesterday, while I was talking with this lovely voluteer, she said to mem "You know, I went to camp here when I was a Girl Scout. They actually made us dig our own toilets out there in that field."

So, other than re-living "fond" memories of my youth, we have been quite busy this summer. We went to Florida and met the rest of Ed's family down there for the second Cychowski Family Beach Reunion. Our friends, Debbie and Ben and the kids came with us, and we had one of the best beach vacations we've had in ages!

The kids at Baytowne. Can you spot the crab in this picture?

Lucy at the Euro-bungie. Do you get the idea that she is daring her Dad to do this? She LOVED this!

Two weeks later, we went to Pigeon Forge, TN for our first BCS travel reunion (we met the group of people we traveled with in China when we brought Lucy home)! It was terrific. The Cirque de Chine had an entire day planned for "all children adopted from China" - so we took that opportunity to schedule a "reunion". Though the kids really did not remember each other, most of them were around the same age and they had a ball playing with each other.

This cracks me up.

So does this.