It's Summer! And I like it!

I'm ashamed to admit that summer has not been my favorite thing in the past. Since leaving Colorado, summer has been an inconvenience - changes in schedules for the kids, lack of consistency, failure to establish a pattern. That's the control freak in me wigging out.
This year, thanks to some input from some of the greatest women in cyberspace (Meg and Beth especially) I decided to treat summer like summer.
This past weekend - the first weekend everyone was done with school in our house - there was a new slip-n-slide (only because once I invited Josh's BF to come over and slip and slide did I learn the old one didn't work anymore, so we scampered to Target), the snocone maker was out, the grill was on. I even bought a little firepot to quench my need for some flammage outside in the dark. I thought "this is pretty cool! This feels like summer!"
What took me so long to like it, right?
I also have some photos of the teachers gifts, since I went jabbering on facebook about painting bags. The cute tags on the candy bars, Swedish fish and root beer are from 'eighteen25" - another superbulous blog for the crafty.

The second photo is the painted bags - I cannot for the life of me remember what website that idea came from but I like it -- and a rather unflattering shot of the potato chip scarf for Josh's wonderful kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Super.