august-ing ...

Once Race Week is over, August begins and the summer starts to shift from a time of endless carefree days into a season that is fleeting ... class lists/teacher assignments are distributed by the end of the first week and before you know it, you're cracking the whip on those untouched summer reading books and planning Fall activities.  Frankly, August can be a bit of a downer if you're not careful ... but every August day needs to be enjoyed to its fullest ... while there's still time.

Every year, the last half of August - the time after camp has ended but before school has started - is reserved for me and the girls to spend with my mother.  Living so far away from my family in Florida, these lazy visits are few and far between ... so it's a cherished time for sure.  My mother spends the summertime in West Virginia, a manageable 13-hour road trip from our cozy seaside nook and a world apart with its rolling hills and farmlands.  We loooove it!  You can read about last summer's adventures here.  As for this summer, we changed it up a bit this year.  I received a "persuasive letter" as we call them in our family ... when the kids have something they want to see changed (or something that they would like to have), we encourage them to write a "persuasive letter" to us that outlines the reasons why this change is deserved.  Here is what I received about a month before our road trip ...

The reference to "hopefully NOT get sick" is because about a year and a half ago, the girls and I met my mother for the weekend in NYC ... we had 5th row seats to see a Broadway show, hotel reservations in Times Square, dinner reservations at Serendipity, the whole works - one big magical day together in NYC.  But instead of being at any of those places, my poor little ladybug spent the entire weekend getting sick in the hotel bathroom. It was heart-wrenching not only to see her that sick and depleted, but to see her disappointment over how much was being missed right outside our hotel window - she had been looking forward to that weekend for months.  Talk about adding insult to injury!  So how could I possibly say no to adding a couple of nights in NYC to our annual road trip to West Virginia?!

In any event, that was a very long way of saying that our August looked just like this ...

fabulous view from the room!

right outside the hotel doors in times square

not exactly ...

the bottom row of windows is the VH-1 studio in times square ... you'll see 2 people standing in the window under the pepsi symbol - the one in white on the left (with the huge hat) is ... LADY GAGA!  she was waving to all of her crazy fans on the street below

no ice skating in August!

sock monkey was carefully propped up in our hotel window so we could wave to him from the top of the Empire State Building just a few blocks away ...

Hi, Sockey, can you see us up here?!?!?!

future cabbies ...

kicking it up with the rockettes at the wax museum ...

nighty night, new york ...

sleep tight, for tomorrow we hit the road again ...

Then after a quick 7 hours into the hills of West Virginia ...

Yes, indeed, we lived each day of August to the fullest ...

There shall be eternal summer
in the grateful heart
~Celia Thaxte~