Summer photo album

How has the summer been for you?

Yes, OK, technically the dog days of heat are still blazing outside, but here in our college town, the familiar sights and sounds of a new fall semester abound. Wal-Mart is overflowing with chaotic bins of school supplies, the streets are clogged with halting freshmen (and their parents!), and a sign at the local Starbucks declares what everyone already knows: that pumpkin spice lattes are only a few months away! 

Tomorrow classes begin again, and I can't help but feel the nostalgic pull to books and backpacks and the crisp smoothness of new spiral notebooks. *Sigh* I will forever be a student on the inside. 

Looking behind, this third summer of married life has had a completely different flavor from the first two. 

Last year was a summer of mountains, car trouble adventures, friendship insecurities, and wide-flung travel. The summer before was even crazier, with our wedding, honeymoon, head-lice (ooooooh, now there's a story...), and the foreignness of navigating my new role as wife. 

Despite another trip to Italy, some deep soul-searching, a long and ongoing job search, and a few road trips in-state, this summer has had a comfortable rhythm of rest, work, and the homey pleasures that come from having frequent guests. We painted my former study room-turned-guest room, transforming it from this color...

to this. (Correct color, but not an actual picture of the room. I wish!)

And you're probably thinking, "Uhhh, yeah.  A VERY needed change, especially if people plan to SLEEP there." Yep. I agree. 

Even though our new guest room was in progress for most of the summer, several dear friends and family members blessed us by breaking it in and keeping us company. I enjoyed them so much that I barely missed the mountains! 

So here is a short picture update of our summer shenanigans, to be followed by some more thoughtful posts soon. Right now, however, I simply wanted to let my bloggy friends know we hadn't died or anything, given my looooonnng absence from this site. :)

This dear friend spent a whole weekend with us early in the summer! She tried the local frozen yogurt, went with us to the George H. Bush presidential library, introduced us to this fascinating documentary. 

The Berlin Wall came down during Bush Sr.'s presidency, and his presidential library displays a colorful, graffiti-covered chunk of the demolished barrier. 

Then came my sister and her husband! We spent an entire day in the city for a conference, and then sis and I squeezed in a quick walk before they left. The flower we found on the walk made me catch my breath. I mean, just LOOK at it! Can you believe something like this was simply growing wild, unnoticed, on a walking trail in a city park?

And then the other sister came with her boyfriend! I had to work, but the hubs took them to the famed Blue Bell factory an hour away for a tour. If you live in Texas, you must, I repeat MUST visit this place! 

The night before they left, we all went to a local coffee shop for some Harry Potter-inspired "butter beer" (actually cream soda, butterscotch syrup and heavy cream) and a card version of Monopoly. 

And of course, we painted ourselves blue for free food with the summer homegroup! (I had work the next morning, so I was excused from full blue coverage.)

We had more visitors, there were several beautiful weddings, and there were countless silly, serious, tearful moments in between, but life is not always recorded as it's lived. Sometimes the spontaneity of a moment is half its joy. The record-keeping would spoil it, rather than preserve it. So there you go: a little snapshot of our summer!