Sweet July. Where have you gone?

Just like that.  July is over.

Considering that we've had a couple of lazy weeks of vacation, we've actually been pretty busy.  Is that possible?  To be busy while being lazy?

Since my last post, we've celebrated a couple of 40th birthdays with our much younger friends, Peter enjoyed his annual reunion of old work buddies to golf in a memorial tournament for our dearly missed friend Brian, the kids have been spending lots of time with their friends - on biking adventures, scootering around town, swimming and sleepovers, and I've capped off the month with a night on my front porch drinking far too much wine and chatting with Katharine just like the old days.

On Harry Potter night downtown, we ran into some of our favourite people:

I picked up Juliana's American Girl magazine from the mailbox and noticed that the insert was a huge doodle picture - just like the kind I loved to do when I was her age!  For about an hour I considered sneaking it out of the magazine before she saw it so that I could secretly work on it once she'd gone to bed.  In the end, I think that I've convinced her that it can be a summer project that we can work on together.  Win-win.

I cleaned out underneath Sheldon's bed:

I surprised Juliana with tickets to see Taylor Swift when she came to town.  Really, though, I'm not sure who was more excited!  It was a great experience for both of us - it's been so long since I've been to see a big name and then to take Juliana to her first big concert was very, very fun.  We walked around the arena taking it all in, we paid too much money for popcorn that may well have been popped the week prior, and then bought the t-shirt.  I had brought ear plugs for Juliana knowing that the music would be WAY too loud for her and although she resisted at first she was using them by the second song.  It was an exciting, overwhelming night and even though she was near exhausted, we still managed to sneak in a McDonald's fry drive-thru so that we could enjoy a post-midnight snack when we got home.  

And then, three days later, we headed off to the Huron shores for a week of camping.

But that, my friends, is another story for another day.