Ready. Set. CRAM!

Here in the Pacific Northwest we are known for our rain, and we get a lot, I’m talking A LOT of flack for it.  But we have a secret, and I’m going to share it with you. 

You see as a native to the Pacific Northwest I know that if you get through the rain, and the wind, and the rain, and the never-ending cloudy days, and the rain, and the hail/sleet/snow (on occasion), and the rain…well then you get to summer. 

And summer in the Pacific Northwest is simply perfection.  You have temperatures in the upper 70’s to mid 80’s most of the time, absolutely no humidity and the view, oh my heavens the views.  Snow-capped mountain ranges, water everywhere, and everything is as green as green can be. 

Well this year Mother Nature completely screwed us.  Yep, I said it, and I’m not kidding.  She flat out screwed us out of our summer.  We’ve had a summer phenomenon that has been titled “The 78 Minute Summer.”  Which means that we have had exactly 78 minutes of 80 degree or warmer temperatures.  This after all the rain, wind, and grey days, really isn’t much of a summer at all.

But this last week we got a glimmer of hope, local meteorologists in our area were hinting at nice weather for the weekend.  Could it be?  Could we really see temperatures up in the 80’s?  Somebody pinch me. 

Of course it has to hit the weekend before the kids go back to school, so in order to not hear “but MOOOOMMM we didn’t have a summer, I can’t go back to school” out of the mouths of my children set on repeat what did we do?

Why we did what any good Native Pacific Northwesterner would do, we crammed every single summer activity we could think of into three itty bitty teeny weenie days! 

For me the fun started on Friday!  I finally went and got Buggy’s 1 year pictures taken (hey better late than never) and then that evening I went out with my girlfriends for an epic Girls Night Out full of smiles, laughter, karaoke, dancing and did I say laughter?  It was so much fun, and just what I needed.  Well, with exception of the 1:30am walking through the door.  THAT was brutal!

Saturday we got up bright and early so we could take the boys to the State Fair.  We go every year and always have a fabulous time.  We saw all the animals, learned about sheep’s wool, watched cow’s getting milked, pet some dogs, fed horses, ate enough greasy food that it will no doubt be coming out of my pores for the next few months, and rode all the rides we could.  We had a fabulous time but by the end of the day we ended up with three crabby boys, two of which didn’t want to go home and a baby who never took a nap.   As we were heading for the exit I received a swat on my butt from my sweet 5 year old boy in protest because he did not want to leave before going down the slide.  After I got out of my state of shock I was the “mean mean mommy and told him how sorry I was but that he already chose his last ride to be the bouncy cars and that we are now going home.   Besides, the slide was the only ride that had a line the length of a football field in the whole friggin fair!  It would have taken him FOREVER to get up there.  He screamed all the way back to the car, and then was fine.  *sigh*

Sunday we woke up bright and early AGAIN!  I’ve got to find things to do where we can start at a reasonable hour.  This time we were taking the boys boating.  It was a gorgeous day, not a cloud in the sky and it was WARM…perfect boating weather.  We went to a gorgeous local lake that had beautiful views of the mountains and foothills.  We were so excited!  We had a day filled with swimming, tubing, sunning, singing, and screaming.  Wait…what?  Yep!  Screaming!  Buggy, who once again didn’t have a nap, absolutely hated wearing a life jacket!  So he spent a lot of the time screaming bloody murder!  *sigh*  I told my husband that I just realized that the next time we would be able to be on the water and be relaxed is when our boat is 25 years old! 

That brings us to today!  Today is where we are pulling out all the stops.  We will have swimming in the pool, slip and sliding on the grass, running through the sprinkler, having epic water gun fights, throwing water balloons and basically doing any other water activity we can think of in our backyard.  Followed by a BBQ with wonderful friends and family!! 

I do believe it is safe to say that we simply could not fit anything else into this last weekend of summer.  It’s been a blast and I’m thankful that we had these last few days be as nice as they have been.  And when the kids come to us tomorrow morning with “but we didn’t do anything allllllll summer”…

We can tell them “yes we certainly did.  We did it allllll last weekend!”

What is your favorite thing you did this summer?  What favorite memory will you take away from this summer?