Clinging to Summer!

Our co-op has its first meeting tomorrow, and are we ready?  No!  The children are still dawdling over papers they should have finished last week.  But if we only played when the work was done, we'd Never play (or perhaps they'd learn better work habits?  Experience seems to suggest the former, but I'm never quite sure.), so yesterday we went to Hungry Mother State Park in Virginia and had a great "beach day." 

Travis leaped from the high board again and again.

Katie kept walking out to the end of the high board, then changing her mind and jumping from the lower board.

And finally, with Travis right behind for moral support, she worked up her nerve and jumped from the high board!  And then did it again.  And again.  And again!

Have I mentioned that the kids are eating peanut butter sandwiches now?  And how convenient this is?  In all honesty, they aren't wild about peanut butter.  They would rather have deli meat or fried chicken, well, actually, lots of things.  But they'll eat peanut butter, which is good enough!

Here is Ed, relaxing in his beach chair.  He enjoyed the drive, except when he got kind of edgy during his hour plus long "short cut," but after about half an hour of sitting on the beach he was ready to head out again.  I made him stay longer, because the kids were having such fun, and he was a good sport.

So I tried to be a good sport in return and let him take my picture, squinting into the sun.  Katie looked at this and asked, "Why were you so angry?"  Really I wasn't, but between the sunscreen melting into my eyes and the sun (when we win the lottery I'm buying prescription sunglasses!), it does look that way.

The funny thing was that, just before the park entrance, we found the ice cream shop we've been looking for for the past four years.  One of the houses that we looked at when we were house hunting turns out to have been right near the park entrance, and if the realtor had mentioned that there was a state park next door, she probably would have had a sale.  Just out of curiosity, we drove past, and the house is Still for sale.  But, anyway, the ice cream place turns out the have been in Virginia, not North Carolina, as Ed remembered.  Good thing, too, because their Mocha Madness ice cream is irresistibly luscious.

Katie was four the last time she rode this horse, and I wanted to post the pictures together, but the old picture is on my computer and still inaccessible thanks to that virus thingy (I'm posting from Ed's computer -- thank you sweetie!).
Ed gave the kids a dollar each, and they went wild!

It was a grand day out.