Summer Summary Part 1

Ok, here it is.  It's going to take me days to put this together.  I don't intend to encapsulate our entire summer in one post. But I do want to hit the highlights and it may take several posts to do even just that! It was a busy, wonderful, very hot summer.

So let's just pick up where we left off...in the garden.
This was my first semi-successful experience gardening in NC.  I was pleased that we had a long growing season and harvested plenty of things that we ate in our meals pretty much all summer long.  In fact, even tonight (October 17, 2019) we ate some of the very last remaining tomatoes in our tacos!  I love eating from our own back yard.

The best harvest (most fun) was that of the purple potatoes.  Wow, it was like being on a treasure hunt and we literally squealed with glee when we dug up those purple jewels!

It was so fun to eat them for dinner. We all swore that they tasted better than any potato we'd ever eaten.  I'm not sure if that's true but we did take pleasure in eating our very first potato harvest.

We sure did have a ton of tomatoes to eat this summer!  I told the kids that next summer I want to weigh our harvest each day and keep track of the poundage.  I think that would be a fun exercise and then try to beat our record each year.  

Here's a salad made almost entirely from the garden

Sorry it's upside down.  Pizza! Homegrown basil and tomatoes.

Moving on from the garden: 

Our biggest adventure this summer was a cruise to the Bahamas!  It was my first ever cruise, and even though we had some very enjoyable moments, I'm pretty sure it will  be my last.  Not my favorite way to vacation.

This girl got her first "real" job!  She continues to babysit and clean houses too!  She also entered her dual enrollment program and is studying full time at a local community college.  She's a busy girl these days!

This spunky little thing attended her first day camp.  It was only for 2 hours three times a week but she really enjoyed the super hero theme.

Two of the girls joined a summer swim team.  The team did very well!

We were invited to some pretty lavish birthday parties!

And we did our best to keep cool in what felt like an unbearably long, suffocating summer.

More summer high lights in the next post...