Happy Independence Day! I hope all my fellow Americans had a fun holiday. And I hope the rest of you had a great Friday and that we are all looking forward to a relaxing weekend.

If you follow me on Flickr, you might have noticed I’ve been posting a lot of photos the last few days. That’s because my mom just went back home, and I know she always goes through Annalie withdrawal for a while. So I’m trying to ease the pain a little bit.

Of course, my mom’s not the only one who misses Annalie. I know her other grandparents wish they could see her more often, not to mention assorted aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends.

I guess what I’m saying is, one of the reasons I take so many photos is the same reason I started this blog: so family and friends can see what we’re doing in our day-to-day lives even if they live far away.

Since we moved recently and are missing our friends on the other end of the country I am happier than ever that I listened to Angella and Brenda and Heather, that I believed them when they said I would love blogging. I’ve had at least two of our Maryland friends tell me specifically that they enjoy reading (Hi, Sarah! Hi, Bek!) and are glad they have this way to keep in touch.

My friend Rachel commented once that she looks forward to reading my blog, and sometimes wishes I would blog more. That was one of the nicest comments I’ve ever got, and often when I start to think I’m posting too often I remember her comment and post again anyway.

Huh. I’ve rambled on a little bit and I don’t really know how to end this post. I guess that’s okay once in a while. It’s late and I’m tired. So I’ll just stick another photo at the end and call it a night.

Hmmmm, what WAS it? I know there was something I wanted to do today. Oh, right—I wanted to unpack some more boxes. But here’s the thing: Annalie thinks unpacking is boring. She’s excited about helping for a minute or two and then she wants to move on to the next thing.

And I freely admit that Annalie is not the only one who was spoiled by Gramaw over the past couple of months. Sure, Annalie got used to always having an adult paying attention to her and it might take her a little while before she is happy to play on her own more often. But I got used to always having another adult around too!

I did open a box and try to arrange some stuff in the kitchen but I kept having to interrupt what I was doing to make breakfast, find a coloring book, pour a glass of milk, go upstairs and turn on Zoboomafoo, make a snack, etc. Sometime before lunch I gave up and asked Annalie if she wanted to play outside.

We found the blue wading pool in the garage. It was a little squashed, a little dirty, with a couple of cracks in it. We scrubbed it down and plastered packing tape over the cracks on the bottom and it worked just fine.

I sat in the shade with my Diet Coke and read my book while Annalie splashed and messed with the hose. I felt a bit guilty at first for not being inside industriously unwrapping and organizing all our stuff. But as I watched Annalie play and giggle, I let my guilt evaporate in the summer sun. She won’t be four and carefree forever, easily pleased by an hour in a cheap wading pool with an old plastic cup. We might as well make the most of it while we can.

And anyway I have a friend coming to visit this weekend and she’s going to help us unpack! Do I win hostess of the year for that, or what? At least I can offer her fresh-squeezed lemonade while she works.

Or maybe we’ll just sit around and let the kids play in the wading pool. That would be fine by me too.

FINALLY. Annalie had only been asking to make lemonade about twelve times a day for the past week. Also, I wanted to try to make some before my mom left, and today was her last day here.

Over the past few days as we unpacked the kitchen boxes we found the juicer and knives and other necessary implements. Troy and I bought the lemonade carafe on clearance a couple of days ago. And today we went to the store and bought a bag of sugar (after I remembered that I had given my sugar away before we moved and therefore was never going to find it in any of the boxes in my kitchen). We finally had everything we needed.

We measured sugar and water into a pan to make simple syrup, because I’d never made lemonade that way and wanted to try it. While that was cooking, we started slicing and juicing the lemons. Annalie had fun trying to squeeze the juice out of the first couple of lemons, but after the fourth or fifth lemon she was slumped on the table, complaining that making lemonade was boooooriiiing.

Two lemons later, I had enough juice and poured it into the carafe. Then I asked Annalie if she wanted to add the water to the carafe all by herself, and she perked right up and decided making lemonade was SO FUN! She concentrated hard and got every drop of water in the carafe without spilling. She was quite proud of herself.

Meanwhile, the sugar had dissolved in the boiling water and I had turned the heat off under the pan to let the syrup cool a bit. We added that to the lemon-juice mixture and Annalie stirred it all up. We poured a tiny bit into glasses for a taste test and agreed it needed to be just a touch sweeter. Finally, it was perfect.

Yum! Is there anything better on a summer day than homemade lemonade? Well, probably. But homemade lemonade is pretty darn good!

We’re glad you got to make lemonade with us before you went home, Mom! Thanks for all your help over the past weeks. We don’t know what we would have done without you.

Yes, I realize that this post is rather similar to SAJ’s lemonade-making post from a few days ago. Sorry if you got déjà vu reading it!