In my teens, sleeping in meant sound asleep until about 12 noon.  Then in my twenties, sleeping in meant not getting out of bed until about 10, maybe 11.  And now in my thirties, sleeping in means waking by 7 or 7:30.  And since it’s the first day of summer vacation,  you’d think I’d be able to sleep in later.  Nope.  Wide awake at 7:30.

I do my business in the bathroom, lace up my shoes, and head out for my usual morning run — except my usual morning run is at 5 during the school year.  I ran a slow, slow 4 miles, perfect for a first day of summer vacation run.

I take my time to enjoy breakfast, watch the news, smell the gardenias, and decide how I’m going to spend the rest of the day.  Again, I’m moving really slowly, enjoying each moment of my lazy, carefree summer vacation.

Our friend Cary said that he’d come over sometime in the morning to help us split wood, so while waiting for him, I settle on doing some yard work.  An hour goes by with no sign of Cary.  I decide that I’ve had enough yard work for the day and pack up my tools and close the gate.  (Now, our gate is broken so closing the gate is a big ordeal, especially when two large stumps of wood are used to hold it open.)  And as soon as I step foot into the house, guess who shows up hauling a big ass wood splitter behind his slow moving, oversized truck.  Yep, our good friend, Cary.

I spent the next three hours dragging tree stumps to the splitter  while Cary splits the wood.  As the pile of split wood grew increasing larger, I hauled it to the back with a wheelbarrow and stacked it in neat piles for the winter.  And in the middle of this, there was a freakin’ huge downpour.  Yeah, a downpour during my first day of summer vacation.  We carried on, despite the heavy shower from mother nature.

In the afternoon, I made an olalleiberry pie.

And for dinner, we invited our friends over for a little celebratory dinner.  We’re just all thrilled to be out of school!  We had rice + flank steak + salad + homemade vinaigrette + pie for dessert!

In the evening, I played around in my studio and made this simple layout using a combination of papers from the Green Tangerines Kits, which by the way is also on summer vacation.  The owner is putting the kit club on vacation for the summer as she works out the plans to reopen her store.  (Good luck, Kelly!) The contents on layout below came from this recent post.  By the way, I really love the Hambly woodgrain transparency.