Last Summer Weekend

The last weekend of the summer is in the books. It was a busy and fun one.

It started super early, at least for C and I, as she had her first cross country meet of the year Saturday morning. I had to have her at the course by 6:30 am, which meant a 5:45 alarm for us. I was not super fond of the early wake time, but she did just fine. She was in as good of a mood as she’s ever been in first thing in the morning. I think she was looking forward to running.

That showed in her performance. She ran in the 3rd–6th grade group, and finished 16th overall out of 105 runners. She was the second-fastest fourth grader, and the fastest fourth grader from St. P’s.[1] More importantly, she cut 30 seconds off her best 3K time. That’s huge, especially when she’s only been going to practice sporadically because of kickball. Her kickball season ends this week, so who knows what she’ll be capable of once she’s running 2–3 times per week before races. She was pretty pleased with her performance, as was I.

After the meet, we grabbed the rest of the family and headed down to the lake. Our guests weren’t arriving until Sunday, so we had the afternoon to get the house and yard in order. It had been exactly a month since our last visit, so there was lots of work to do. The girls swam a little, and we took one trip around the lake with L in the tube, but overall it was a pretty relaxed day.

Sunday, our guests the Heberts and KC Belfords rolled in. There was a lot more tubing and swimming with the addition of five more kids to the mix. Lots of catching up, laughs, and good food and drinks for the grown ups. We had beautiful, if not quite ideal weather all weekend. We had a few cool nights late last week, which extended into the weekend, so the water temperature had already dropped a bit. It was right in the refreshing zone as long as the sun was out. When a cloud passed, it got a little chilly. Naturally, when everyone was packing up to head home on Monday, the temps shot back up into the 90s after five days in the 70s and 80s. Just in time for us to sweat like lunatics as we packed away the dock toys.

And thus wrapped up our 2016 lake season. It’s always crazy to me how quickly this part of the year goes. When Memorial Day rolls around, you’re hoping the water is warm enough so that everyone will want to get in and enjoy it. By late July, the big Friday night trips to the grocery store and the packing up on Saturday begins to get old. August is always a light lake month with school and fall sports beginning. And then suddenly it’s Labor Day weekend and you realize it’s the last chance to spend two days lounging in the water.

We’re going to try to do better about getting down for at least part of a weekend before the month is over. It’s tough with cross country meets every Saturday morning, and L having soccer every Sunday. And while it may be too cold to swim for hours if we make it down later this month, we can still take the boat for a spin or two. We just want to try to make sure our next trip isn’t the annual quick one to get the boat out of the water before the first freeze, or to just do yard work.

And now I guess it’s time to start drinking Oktoberfests.