Our home this morning smells like a curious mixture of tomato sauce (emanating from the big pot bubbling away on the stove), blueberry muffins and spice tea.

Everyone donned sweaters first thing. There is a decided autumnal qualify to the air today. Summer is coming to a close. This has been a very busy season for us. I went back to look at my pictures from the last 3 months and was surprised to see how few there were. I guess we were so busy that camera play fell to the wayside. This has been such a special year, such a full season. We will all carry many memories from this summer. And thankfully, I did manage to capture a few images, a couple of moments in time, to help to sum things up.

Of course the big news this season was travel. For the first time, in a long time, we were able to get out and about and venture far from home. First with our camping trip to the ocean. And then to Philadelphia to visit family. The last time that we went down Iain was four and Elijah had just turned two. Steve’s parents and all of our extended relatives finally got to meet Galen for the first time. As you can imagine, it was a very big deal.

Back home, we spent a lot of time at our community garden plots. That was a first for us and the town this year. The general consensus seems to be that it has been a fabulous addition to our lives!

We are already so excited to be planning our plots for next year.

There was lots of time spent in nature…
Lingering to enjoy the splendor of a summer sunset…
Time spent learning new skills…and trying to perfect old ones…
There were swim lessons and drama classes and several art workshops.

As always there were many, many days spent at the farm…
Last year and this year…(oh, and those are the green shorts that I mentioned before)

And time out in the world meeting new creatures…
Lots and lots of water play, of all sorts…
Many, many hours of building…of splitting and stacking wood, harvesting food, making clothes, and just generally getting ready for the colder weather to come.

Of course there was also some time spent just hanging out at home.
With quite a bit of baby love…
And the usual amount of general silliness….