List o' Summer I

So, how's that summer bucket list going? We've done our first fruit picking, strawberries.  They are lovely this year, a bit late it seems but sweet and juicy and gorgeous.

Isn't that colour just amazing?

We attempted strawberry jam for the third year in a row and still don't have it right, it's lovely but much more like strawberry syrup than jam, not enough pectin?

We made pretty lovely vanilla ice cream, although I don't know how anything with that much cream, eggs and sugar and an entire vanilla bean could be bad.  The custard looked weird and, of course, there were about a thousand steps but it is pretty fantastic.

We made dancing hoops and ankle bells

My video skills are truly excellent

We also went to Bookbug and bought a couple of chapter books.  I wasn't at all sure that she would be into them but she so is! We started off with this

I don't remember it being quite so grim, or maybe I'm just ultra sensitive in trying to shield her from anything vaguely violent or troubling.  I'm not even sure she knows what a gun IS. Anyway, she really loved it.  Real page turning stuff.  Maybe she's just so sick of Brown Bear Brown Bear and the Hungry Caterpillar! So now we are onto Winnie the Pooh which she seems very into as well, despite the archaic language "Pooh strolled a small spinney of larch trees".

Limbo

This winter seemed to go on forever, we were aching for some colour, the first tiny green leaves, blossom even?  Instead the pond remained stubbornly frozen.

There was sickness too, hi preschool!, colds that seemed to run into each other, noses that never stopped dripping, coughs that hacked, and the first tummy bug. Totally unprepared for that one. It turned her into a sleepy, floppy mess, she fell asleep on the couch in the middle of drawing a picture.

We ate pancakes on Pancake Day, although not the sort of pancakes she'd ever had before, thin, with lemon and sugar, what's not to like...

We went to the Meijer Gardens to try to convince ourselves it was spring...

And eventually the first dabs of colour appeared...first in a pair of sparkly shoes

And now summer is really here, the wonderful Michigan summer and our last one.  We don't know how much of it we'll see before we are off to the seasonless land of perpetual sunshine. So we will make the most of every day we have here, whether it's three more weeks or three more months.  So, here's the plan, the list o' summer, I'll take pic and write about every one...maybe.

• Go to the beach
• Pick strawberries
• Build a magnificent sandcastle
• Walk on the trail
• Make perfect, homemade, vanilla ice cream
• Pick blueberries
• Go to Chicago
• Make a summer dress or two
• Make a peach cake
• Make a strawberry pie
• Have a picnic in the back garden
• Paint
• Get ice cream from the ice cream truck
• Have a goodbye party
• Zoo camp
• Nature Center camp
• Eat local fruit and veg from the farmers market
• Eat dinner on the deck
• Make a hat
• Read a chapter book
• Er, that's it...