The Rope Swing and Lake Superior Waviness

Okay, here are some more pictures from the fair first. Austyn met a new friend; he is a robot. The robot was pretty cool, he made jokes and even told Austyn to give him bunny ears.

After some rides and games, Grampa Dewey graciously bought me and Austyn a hotdog, elephant ear, and soda. Despite the look on Dewey's face, he is really enjoying that bratwurst.















They had a bungee/trampoline for kids there too. Austyn really liked it, and didn't wet his pants, which was good.











The waves were really kicking on Saturday, so I jumped in for a while. It was cold, but worth it.














































And here is the rope swing. It's a lot cooler than it looks in these pictures. You can swing from about 30 feet up, from a platform. But Sabrina told Austyn he better take it easy and swing from pretty low.










So this is some of our fun summer stuff.

The Fair and Summer Tree Chopping

So, summer is quickly winding down up here, it seems. This summer has been pretty cool anyway, but the last week has actually felt like fall. Leaves in our yard are changing, for pete's sake! We found out a couple weeks ago that our neighbor to the rear is pretty handy with yard work stuff, including a chainsaw. We learned this after a tree in our front yard got struck by lightning, and the neighbor helped Sabrina's dad, Dave, cut it down. So this evening the neighbor, Mike, cut down three more dead trees in the back yard. So now we have a huge pile of firewood for the fire pit, and a much larger back yard...at least it feels larger, without those big, looming dead trees.

In other news, I won a sweet grill from our bank for Customer Appreciation Week. It's a good one, which is cool, because we've been grilling out a lot this summer. We don't have it yet; still arranging transportation, as it won't fit in either of our cars.

In still more news, Sabrina had a softball tournament last weekend, so I took Austyn to the UP State Fair, which was a lot of fun. We rode quite a few of the rides. Austyn and I became near-obsessed with a game, too. It involved catapulting rubber frogs onto lily pads that were floating in a pond. Austyn got the hang of it, and actually won some cool prizes, which I didn't think was possible at the fair. The most I ever won when I was young was a ring-pop and pixie stix.