I wonder how many blog posts there are out there with that title? Oodles, I suppose. But at least it’s not the norm ’round here.

As you can imagine, we’ve been cramming a lot of summer into the last couple weeks of it. Nothing overly exciting or exotic, but we’ve been doing fun things. Drama camp (parent run) took all of last week. We did an indian spy play. The script was written by a seventh grade boy, with dance numbers and everything. Our family was able to contribute the music and some sari suits for the ninja princesses thanks to our recent obsession with Bollywood movies and a friend with indian relatives. My excellent sister-in-law, who is a dance major, helped choreograph the dances.

Yesterday, I helped the girls sew fabric lunch bags. It took me awhile to figure out how to construct them. On the serger, of course. I patterned them after the typical brown bag lunch sack, making them a bit bigger.

It killed me to create so much garbage last year. Three girls’ lunches every day is three brown bags, three capri sun pouches, and about 12 ziplocs in the trash, 5 days a week. So THIS year, they will each have two or three fabric sacks they sewed themselves, from fabric and notions we already had. (How’s THAT for “green”)?

I’m probably going to pick up a few of these, some of these, and then I’ll try to use some of those disposable-yet-reusable containers whenever possible.

The girls will have to do their part by emptying and rinsing their containers every day. Something they’re not good at. The number of old, moldy half eaten lunches that we dug out of school bags last year was appalling.

Today, we just came back from Jetty Island. It was our first time going and I am very tired. Cool place, though. I’d heard there is no shade to be had anywhere on the island so I finally broke down and bought a Sport Brella which I’d been eyeing all summer. (They’re on sale at Sports Authority right now).

And it was cloudy the whole time.

For a while there, I thought we might end up using it for rain.

Nope.

We did still manage to use it. I set it up and stood in front holding up my beach blanket so the girls could use it as a changing room. I don’t really care, though, I’m glad I have it. It’s the coolest thing ever. Earlier in the summer when we were looking for shoes for Abby, Sports Authority had one on display. They had two full sized camp chairs set up under it, with a large cooler, and there was still room. The fact that a 10 and 11 year old girl can both change clothes simultaneously under it without fighting or bumping into each other is also worth mentioning. It sets up in less than a minute and you can stake it to the ground like a tent. I’ll use this thing everywhere.

Ok, done with the commercial.

So, I’m in bed, ’cause I’m tired, which means I don’t have access to pictures to post. Theoretically, when the girls are back in school (starting tomorrow), I’ll have time to post regularly again. However there’s only 5 1/2 weeks ’til baby comes, and I have a lot to do…