No "Labor" Around Here

No matter when school starts, summer doesn’t officially end until after Labor Day weekend. The most amazing thing to me (which may be purely psychological, but I swear it’s not) is that the day after Labor Day I can literally “feel” fall in the air, the nights get magically cooler, the air feels crisper, and suddenly a big pot of soup doesn’t sound all that bad (there is nothing less appealing than soup in the middle of July).

Jakey and I had a wonderful Labor Day weekend. We headed up to Idaho to “The Lot” Friday after I got off of work, and got there around 7:00, where grandma had dinner ready (even though I told her we would grab something in Logan and not to worry about dinner for us), and then we just relaxed for the evening. I got a call from Rob's mom on the way up that her husband Jim had passed away, although we are sad to see him go, he has been sick for a long time, so in many ways it's a blessing. Jake was concerned because the last time he saw Jimmy he was on oxygen, so Jake asked "did he die because he took those tubes out", so I explained that sometimes people get sick and die, even when they are getting care. Jake is excited though because I told him that maybe "airplane grandma" can come visit us again.

Saturday morning Jake was up bright and early because he had heard that he had new paints that mommy brought along with us for the trip. Jake spent the morning painting, while mom and dad did some work on the deck of the new tree house, which is without a doubt the coolest tree house ever built (with maybe the exception of the one on “Swiss Family Robinson”), it is going to be so cute for the kids. I “helped” by sitting in a chair in the shade with a magazine, and confirmed that all the spindles being hung were indeed straight. Dad came down to watch the Utah game and while I tried to explain football to Jake, he just wasn’t quite ready to be grandpa’s football buddy, so he headed into Preston with mommy and grandma to do a bit of shopping. After we finished shopping Jake wanted go fishing, and the game was over so we headed over to the river for some fishing. The fish weren’t biting much although grandpa got a bite, and let Jake reel it in which Jake thought was really cool, and then they let the fish go. The evening ended with ice cream at Big J’s and a very tired little boy.

Sunday we got up and greeted Jer & Jen and family as well as Scott and Circe and family, Jake was excited to see his cousins. They got out the big blow up slide and soon figured out that if they put about an inch of water in the bottom they could get the “waterslide” effect without the slide collapsing. We sat and watched the kids scream and play in water that was barely on the liquid side, moving pretty close to a solid it was COLD. Then we had a nice dinner of chicken, potatoes, carrots, melon, and scones for dinner, Jake even ate a scone and an entire chicken breast which was pretty impressive (although everyone had to call the scones w/honey “doughnuts with frosting”). While we were finishing eating we could see a big storm cloud moving in and in about 10 minutes the temperature dropped 10 degrees, and it started pouring rain. We all ran to sit in the cabin, which led to the inevitable conversation about early pioneers living with entire families (with LOTS of kids) in one room cabins not even as big as the one we were in (and without satellite T.V.). Hard to imagine, but luckily we were born now so we sent the “littles” up to watch a Spongebob Movie, and the rest of us played Scrabble, read books, or dozed on the couch. It was a really nice day.

Scott and Circe headed back home Sunday night, but Jen and Jer, stayed up for Labor Day, which was spent as it should be, not doing much Labor. It was still raining (it rained all Sunday night and most of Monday morning) but mom, dad, and Jer went over to the river fishing while Jen and I stayed with the kids, and watched a marathon of home improvement competitions on HGTV (we really know how to “rough it”). Jakey and I headed back home Monday evening, in time for me to get the laundry done so everything would be clean for Jake’s first “real” day of school.

I also took off Tuesday (I’ve mentioned my general policy of turning every 3 day weekend into a 4 day weekend) so we could recover, and it was probably a good call. Jake slept until 10:30 Tuesday, which just left him enough time to play a bit, and then get ready for school. The first full day of school went really well, I figured I would start a tradition of taking off the first day of school, and have a little something special for him when he got home. This year we went with an after school snack of the biggest doughnut on the planet (those huge ones at Bowman’s that I always wonder “who buys a doughnut big enough to feed 8 people”, Jake couldn’t even finish ¼ of it working on it on and off all night), a new Bionicle, and some new underwear (which I just threw in because I forgot to buy new underwear with his back to school clothes). Jake and I spent the afternoon hanging out, watching Spongebob, and playing in the backyard on the swingset (well I didn’t play on the swing set, I actually cleaned the bathroom and pulled a few weeds).

It was a great weekend, and now back to work, and back to school for us.

We’re already turning our head towards Halloween as the costume catalog came in the mail yesterday, and Jake has already looked through it 7 times, and changed his Halloween costume at least that often.