Somewhere Between The Seasons

Autumn is in the air! I can smell it, feel it, and taste it. It tastes like juicy hot dogs straight off the grill. It feels like a crisp breeze whisping by and rustling the leaves in the trees. It smells like oiled leather on a well-worn football. My senses are tingling, alerting me to the arrival of fall- my most favorite season of all.  But just because I’m eager for the start of autumn doesn’t mean that I’m quite ready to say good bye to summer. Especially since this summer has been particularly impactful to us and we hate to see it go. That’s why we’re happy to be living somewhere in the in-between.

We started the week off with a trip to the beach. Maybe it was because others knew that summer was drawing to a close, or maybe it was because they were still recovering from Hurricane Irene, but the beach was practically empty. There was plenty of space to stretch out and enjoy ourselves. Josie put her newly acquired body board to good use and taught herself how to body surf. Once she’d got the knack of it, she refused to quit. She rode wave after wave after wave with a huge smile on her face, even if she had just gulped down a mouthful of seawater.

The boys were entertained solely by a couple of large holes in the sand.

They climbed in and out and splashed in the pools of water at the bottom.

I just love to see them all so happy. There’s a special glow to everyone lately, now that the whole family is together.

Later that same day we threw our own little tailgate party in the back yard, in full fall fashion. It started off with a game of tackle football. Now, as you know, football is a very important part of this family’s makeup. God knows we watch the game enough. Josie knows that her favorite team is the blue one and she can cheer, “Go Colts!” at the appropriate times. We’ve played toss inside the house every so often and Jamie recognizes a “bubal” when he sees one.  But this was really the first time that we actually played. The kids are just now getting old enough to grasp the concept of rules and teams and have the motor skills to throw and catch. Ours was an unconventional game, to be sure, and it mostly consisted of Josie running around in circles grasping the football in her arms,

occasionally passing it off to Mommy who would pass it back when she saw Daddy barreling down, while Jamie chased close behind trying to pull her down into the mud,

and Johnny standing in the middle with his little arms waving eagerly and his voice screeching loudly, which in baby talk meant, “I’m open! Pass me the ball!”

It is already an unforgettable memory that I wanted to be sure to commemorate here for posterity. Once the game was over and the grill was smoking we sat down on the porch and ate some hot dogs and bratwursts.

And then to complete the night we all roasted some ooey-gooey s’mores.

Well, Johnny didn’t actually roast them but he did wander around the patio begging bites off of everyone else and ended up with a very funny Hitler-esque marshmallow mustache.

Later in the week I bought a slip n’ slide on clearance for $4. Gotta love end of the season sales! I figured that it would be worth the money even if we only got one weekends’ use out of it. But by the time we got home from the store and I saw the sky filled with menacing grey clouds, I was having second thoughts. I took a poll and the kids agreed unanimously (Johnny voted via proxy) that we’d ignore the weather. There was slipping and sliding galore and no one cared that according to conventional wisdom the temperatures weren’t quite summery enough. Josie sang a rousing rendition of Pink’s So What and the slide became her rock star stage.

This was brought on by the temporary tattoo she’d gotten from a vending machine earlier in the day and was now wearing proudly on her forearm. Jamie was reluctant to participate at first, on a strike because I insisted he had to at least wear a diaper so the neighbors wouldn’t be subjected to his nudity while we played, but he came around once I brought out the pink inner tube.

Johnny got thrown down the slide on his belly once and then picked up the inflatable board and tried doing it all by himself, which left me extremely impressed by his level of comprehension.

After about an hour though the shivers were starting to set in and it was obvious that we had to call it quits. So we headed inside for dinner and made some piping hot alphabet soup. (We’re trying to make sure those canned foods we bought for the hurricane don’t go to waste.) Mmmm!

So here we are, somewhere between summer and fall and loving the variety it has to offer. We’re not quite ready to be done with all the fun we’ve been having the past few months but we are excited to embrace the coming adventures of a new season. By now I'm sure you've figure out that you are meant to read that sentence both literally and figuratively. It adequately prefaces our upcoming venture, which is to send Josie off to kindergarten. She starts on Tuesday, so stay tuned for the full story….