Mother's Independence Day Preparations

The girls' summer vacation is rapidly coming to an end. As a matter of fact, tomorrow is their 1st day of school[aka Mother's Independence Day!!!]. We've been in the preparation mode for a couple of weeks now and with this afternoon's pedicures we mark the end of the  back to school phase. I'll try to get some decent pictures to post of this last Mother/Daughter summer outing but in the meantime I thought I'd give you a peek of our 'last' Friday Family Summer Dinner.

The harvest is picking up steam! We are all getting saturated with cucumbers...time to pawn them off on the neighbors!

I headed over to Auntie Peggy's a little earlier in the day to start the main course....

So??? We happen to LOVE corned beef!!!!! Besides, there were those mega-heads of cabbage to be eaten (:

Just to tweak us, Andrew set the table with his favorite CHRISTMAS cloth and dishes. Grandma was not up to the heat and humidity to make the drive up to Auntie Peggy's but everyone else manged to pull up a seat!

We had kind of expected it to be the type of night where the kids could run and race around outside, catch lightening bugs, and sing around the fire pit...but it decided to rain that evening ):

No worries!!! Auntie Peggy has a gas range so the S'mores dessert plan was not ruined by the rain!!!

I had found these HUGE marshmallows at the local grocery store. So huge that the little mouths really had to stretch to get around those S'mores!

But S'mores being S'mores meant that even the bigger mouths had 'issues' with the marshmallows!

And hands too!! 

Good things there were a lot of dishes that needed washing to get those gooey hands into warm sudsy water!

Now I don't mean to leave you with the impression that Family Dinner nights are over for good!! Just the Friday night version for the summer. Religious education classes are on Wednesdays this year...so Family Dinner Night will just move to Wednesdays....and include HOMEWORK not S'mores and lightening bugs!