did you miss me?

Did you miss me?  I haven’t blogged since June 9th because I have been on summer vacation.  I have received a surprising amount of flack for my lack of posts.  To all my critics, I would like to remind you that this blog is not a real job and you are not actually my boss.  So, until you pay me a lot of money, or large quantities of peanut butter cups, I get to choose my own writing hours and for the summer months I chose iced coffee in my lawn chair.

I am certain you are eager to hear the details of my hiatus, so in a nutshell, here is how I spent my summer:

I visited the Berkshires.  These are mountains in Massachusetts, but if you were raised in the Northwest, calling these hills mountains will make you feel slightly stupid and secretly superior to all Massachusiettes. (I had to look this up.  Apparently a resident of Massachusetts is a Massachusiette, but my spell check does not believe that is actually a word and being a poor speller, I hesitate to argue with my computer).

I picked a lot of berries and baked a lot of pies:

Berry Torte

Pocket Pies

And my oldest tried to study for her SATs but mostly got sidetracked by the smell of pie.

We got a puppy from a rescue shelter:

King Leonidas, four months old

My youngest learned how to swim:

Ella under water

My son spent a disturbing amount of time wearing his snowboard helmet and goggles, counting down the days until snow will fall in the mountains.

Cole in August waiting for snow

And, by the way, our house got broken into and a bunch of stuff was stolen including my Prada handbag.

Note to the thief:  I understand the economy is bad, and for all I know you were fired from  your job at the mini-market, probably because you stole too many Snickers bars and gave your friends free pepperoni sticks, but listen, the Prada was a gift from my husband for our second anniversary.  Each year, Tim looks up what the traditional anniversary gift is.  On our second anniversary, he got me the bag.  Leather is actually the traditional gift for one’s third anniversary, but I swear he sincerely thought we had been married three years.  So, keep the laptops, but dammit I want my Prada!