Summer is sadly and excitedly coming to a close. Technically autumn doesn't start until September 22 but you can smell it in the air. This weekend we had beautiful days of 75 - 80 degree weather. Yet the leaves are falling from the trees and you can hear the crunch, crunch, crunch under feet when you walk down the sidewalk. The air in the morning is cool and almost has a crisp to it. Grill cheese sandwiches, soups, stews, zucchini bread, plum pies and apple sauce have a certain draw to them. The days are getting shorter, dew wets the ground and the fog is sticking around longer. School at our house has started and you can hear the scratch of the pencil on paper. The shorts and t-shirts are being replaced by long sleeve shirts and pants in the mornings. Yet the socks still haven't been returned. You see Job abandoned socks at the beginning of summer. There was no back to school shopping for clothes or school supplies at our house, nor was there the big excitement of starting school and seeing all the friends that you normally would see on the first day. Instead there was the excitement of a back to school party at the beach with friends in the afternoon and the ice cream cones that followed. Soccer season is in full swing and Saturday was spent all day on the pitch (soccer field). This is a bitter sweet time at our house. It is sweet because the flurry of activity, the excitement of learning new things and the friends at soccer practice have replaced the bitterness of saying goodbye to carefree summer days. The swimming pool was drained, cleaned and put away for the winter which opened up the round sandy area in the yard that was quickly dug into and filled with water. So to properly end our summer we are having one last hurrah on the little weedy, muddy duck loving lake with skiing, tubing, and wake boarding. Goodbye carefree summer, hello busy autumn.