What I did this summer

Lisa has been giving me grief for not writing anything for a couple of months, and my excuse has been that it's summer, I'm busy doing things that I will then be able to write about for the rest of the year. So, to back that up, and in honor of kids everywhere returning to school and reporting on what they did for the summer, here goes.

We worked over the kitchen, see Lisa's post here, because I'm too lazy to write one myself. We refinished cabinets, fixed some walls, moved appliances, painted, put up wallpaper, refinished light fixtures, put in a new light fixture and replaced old blinds. It ended up looking good, and was more work than I thought it would be.

We went to Cape Cod, but you already knew that, because that is the one thing that I did post about. It was fun.

We went camping with 20 teenage girls in the Adirondacks and called it Young Women's High Adventure/Drama. I have learned that if you put that many teenage girls together for a long enough time period, drama is a natural consequence. It's kind of like when you mix two hydrogens with one oxygen, you get water. Maybe I could write an equation representing this phenomena and patent it. Again, because I'm too lazy, here is Lisa's version of the events, with lots of nice pictures. It was a fun time, I got to fish and be outside in the mountains (hills) of the Adirondacks. The day we went on our long hike (10 miles) our big group splintered into three smaller groups of slow, medium and fast paced. Lisa stuck with the slow group, not because she is slow, but to encourage and push them on. I went with fast group, which consisted of three girls who were all runners. They wanted to run. The whole way. Up the the mountain. I made it to the top with them, but I could hardly walk the next day, and it took me a good week to be back to normal. What happened to the days of playing basketball for five hours and getting up the next day and doing it again?!

We made a quick trip to Utah for my grandma's memorial service. It was good to be able to see lots of family, especially on my dad's side, that I hadn't seen in 15 years, and some for even longer. It was a nice, simple service. I also got to meet and try and intimidate Katie's boyfriend Jameson. I know what you're thinking. Very intimidating. It looks like he will be a permanent addition to the family, so I was mostly nice. We had a lot of fun with my whole family together, which doesn't happen too often as we are all spread out pretty good. I also discovered on this trip why red eye flights are cheaper. They're awful. We left SLC at 1am going to Atlanta. Airlines already pack you in like sardines, and I'm not the smallest sardine in the can, so trying to catch a few minutes sleep was no small accomplishment. We finally got back to Rochester about noon and promptly crashed for the next six hours. Red eye flights = yuck. Again, look at Lisa's post.

We started the mandatory training courses (30 hours) to become foster/adoptive parents in New York State. It has been an interesting journey, leading up to the point of even starting this process, and then in the classes as well. The classes have generated lots of good fodder for many discussions in the Packer home as we work through wanting children, not being able to have any right now, and how we are going about trying to rectify that. We should be certified by the end of this month, so there are possible big changes coming to our home.

I've read lots of books this summer, gone on walks with my wife, tied flies for the upcoming fall fishing season, gone to baseball games, and spent a lot of time at work and at church, or church related functions. We've had a lot of BBQ, planted some new flowers and tried to get the grass to grow better under the maple trees. I'm open to suggestions on that last one.

It has been a satisfying summer, although I must admit that I can't believe that it is already gone. But that's OK, because the greatest season is now upon us. College Football Season (also known by many as fall). Besides football, I'm also excited for fall leaves/scenery/food. It's going to be a really busy fall for us, with a plethora of church activities awaiting, but we are looking forward to a trip to NYC the third weekend of October, and then maybe some family visiting for Thanksgiving, before we head back to the land of promise for the holidays. Lest there be any confusion as to where the land of promise is (although I'm not sure how anyone could mix this up), it's Wyoming.