Where have I been?!?!

Okay – I know that it’s been a while since I’ve posted…a LONG while, I just realized!

So…where have I been? Out in the sun, enjoying the beautiful warm weather – it’s summer, for goodness sakes! 😉

My family and I have a membership to Lake Kandle – a nice, old fashioned lake and swim club. My kids took swim lessons every day for two weeks, and since we were already there, we just stayed for the day. Every day. For two weeks. THAT’S why I haven’t posted. But I am getting very tan, if I do say so myself.

We had an odd July 4th – the weather was not the best, so we decided to just stick around home for the day. Mike and the kids went to the Pitman parade and I volunteered for our church’s Open House in the afternoon. We just completed a new church building and opened it up so that the community could come and see what we’ve done. We had a great turnout – several hundred people came through. You can see our new building at the Pitman United Methodist Church website. Then we watched the 4th of July fireworks right from our front yard. Every year, our little town (Pitman, NJ) has a fireworks display at Alcyon Lake – which happens to be at the end of our street. So we set up chairs out front and watch them in comfort – we don’t have to deal with traffic, finding a parking spot or whining kids (well…the kids still whine, but we can just send them inside) – it’s a nice tradition that we enjoy every year.

We also were away all last week on a camping trip at Big Timber Lake Camping Resort in Cape May Court House, NJ. We reserved our site last year so that we would be right next to the swimming lake – here’s the view from our campsite:

It was WONDERFUL to be so close to the lake!!! At night, after it closed, it was like we had our own private beach. And the kids took advantage of that to play in the sand and look up at the stars.

Unfortunately, Mike had to work all week, so it wasn’t much of a vacation for him. But the kids and I had a great time.

So did Daisy Doodle. She was QUITE the center of attention! In addition to being close to the lake, we were also right on a path where people walked by all day long. Here’s a shot of her and Emily watching the people go by….

So…Daisy’s MO was to sit there looking all cute and everything until people stopped to pet her. How could you resist this face?

Well…let me tell you – no one could resist her charms! By the time we left, Daisy practically had her own fan club. Other campers were coming up and having their pictures taken with OUR DOG! One man took a photo on his cell phone and mailed it to his fiance. When she saw it, she drove all the way out to the campground to see Daisy in person. And there was one French-Canadian family that came by every single day and spoke to her in French. They said that they never saw a dog that made them so happy (let me just say that if Daisy went missing, the first place I was going to look would be Quebec – she had several French admirers during the week!).

As for me, I managed to finish several books – I started reading novels again this summer. Why did I stop reading them in the first place? Well…the problem is that I love reading SO much (and always have) that I tend to become so involved with the book – reading every minute I get – that I let everything else fall apart around me. But now that the kids are older, I find that I have more time to dedicate to reading – they don’t need all of my attention. As a matter of fact…I think I’ll start a new blog category about the books I’m reading this summer and my thoughts on them…

Anyway…I do have several craft projects to share with you, too…I’ll post them under the appropriate category…