Longest Day Party

There have been a few times what we do on the Summer Solstice could be classified as a REAL party. You know, one with exciting "party food" and maybe even a few little decorations…but…it's been a long time ago now. (That reminds me. In French, when you want to say how long ago something was, you just say "it is" or "it was" after the amount of time. Like, "I last saw you it is four months." Or "I started learning French it is ten years." There's something I like about that. I don't know why.) At any rate, I did real party preparation it is at least six years…ha ha. Still, nothing wrong with a hastily-thrown-together celebration that doesn't make a person wilt with exhaustion to even contemplate!

This year ours looked like:

• Holding our celebration at a park a few blocks away instead of in the canyon or somewhere else exciting…but there were fire pits, which makes anything fun!

• Turkey Sandwiches on English Muffins, toasted on a griddle over a fire and turned very clumsily with marshmallow-roasting sticks

• Milk in plastic cups

• S'mores with IKEA chocolate…the very best kind of chocolate for s'mores…acquired earlier that day by a VERY intrepid individual (myself) who, when greeted with the horrifying block-long LINE to even enter Ikea—instead of turning away in defeat, entered the wrong way through the market and even mustered up the courage to walk right past the employee who was clearly at the door to make sure no one broke any rules…and who happily didn't even bat an eye at this line-avoiding backwards-store-entering…but indeed approved it!

So you see it was a very satisfactory party in spite of everything.

Our group included three big boys.

And three small boys. Goodness, they all look quite serious, don't they?

Baby Gus was content to chew his stroller strap…for a time.

And to top it all off, three girls! On a playground.

The kids always enjoy clambering around in a net.

Even Malachi! Here's he's challenging his sisters to race on some sort of obstacle course.

I don't know what these pipe tunnels are for, but Ziggy sure liked going through them. He asked me to take his picture about a hundred times, and then said "Now I see it?" until I showed it to him on the camera.

After it got dark you could still see the pink light glowing on the mountains.

Then the clouds got really pretty.

Seb is now one of those (rather annoying, I always thought in the past…don't tell him I said that…) people who goes around hopping his bike up and down curbs and doing tricks. I am more tolerant of it now that I see how much practice is required to do those tricks—I guess I now see why people want to show them off. :) Anyway, he asked me to take pictures of him, and when a 14-year-old boy wants me to take his picture…I quickly and happily comply! He had a gorgeous backdrop, anyway!

We roasted a few good marshmallows. Something was weird about them this time, though. Maybe a different brand than usual? I didn't think it would matter, with marshmallows…but maybe it does.

Ziggy's hands got very sticky. Here he is juuuust on the edge of panicking about it. My advice to "wipe them on the grass" didn't work very well.

This picture expresses very well how he, and indeed I, feel about sticky hands.

But he got over it. He doesn't seem to mind a sticky face too much!

Sam wasn't feeling very good. But he persevered valiantly to the end of the evening.

It's worth making a fire just to see Ziggy's expressions as he watches it.

When we headed home at 9:45 pm or so, the sky was still light in the west!