The Last Hurrah

Yesterday was our last hurrah for the summer.  We started with a sleep over the night before on the couch cuddled into Grandpa's nooks and crannies with a bowl of popcorn and a movie. Yesterday we went back to South Haven to the city beach where the play equipment and the light house are.  It was sweatshirt cool and the yellow caution flags were flying so we couldn't be in the water.  That was ok, there were plenty of other things the girls wanted to do and we flitted along touching on all of them.

 Adelaide isn't ready to give up the baby swings and Grandpa had to do some origami folding to fit her into her favorite blue swing.  They don't need to be pushed anymore. They can do it themselves.

 We saw the Friends Goodwill ship leave the channel and head out into the lake

 and walked the pier to give the lighthouse a hug, always in the past our measure of how much they've grown.

 They staked claim to the boulders and remembered playing a game on them from years past and tried to do that again.

 But I think it was the walk into the dune grass when the disillusionment reared its ugly head.  Elizabeth was disappointed there were many walking trails carved into the grass where for years there were none or just one or two. They used to be small enough that we could barely see them when they ran into the grass playing they were wild animals on the hunt. Look at them now.  I think at this point,  trying to recapture the things that meant so much when they were four years old just didn't look or feel the same when you're nine years old.  It just wasn't the same. It's a hard realization for all of us!

 On the way to our favorite restaurant, SuCasa, we stopped at a little boutique. Adelaide went for the hats.  She was disappointed the sleep mask she liked was gone. 

They wanted to start a singing group with everyone wearing one of these hats.

After lunch we had time to stop at Sherman's for the last ice cream cone of our summer.  That's a baby sized scoop, by the way.

School starts Tuesday and yes, they are ready for the new routine, new teacher, new mix of classmates.  They just won't admit it.