Thus Ends the Summer of 2016

I am planning to bust out the fall porch decorations this weekend, you know what that means, right? Summer is O.V.E.R. Insert sad face, here.

On the bright side, we all know that I loves me some fall, so, moving on.

Before I do, however, I want to check in with my Summer Bucket List items to see how badly I sucked at them.

1.  Eat my weight in locally grown cherries. Oh, friends, I NAILED this one! In fact, if I had to estimate how much I spent on cherries, the total would probably rival the expense of a new Coach bag. I mean, it would have to be last season's bag, purchased from an outlet, but, still. Cherries were my jam.

2.  Host at least three porch nights. Welllll, I hosted two, so, close, but, no cigar.

3.  Churn a batch of homemade ice cream. This so did not happen. I wish it had.

4.  Celebrate the 4th of July at the lake, with good friends. Another success! I'm, what, 2 for 4? Only half-sucky so far!

5.  Get our annual photo of the children in the spillway of the dam. This also did not happen. When we were at the lake, the water was too high to access the spillway, plus, we were missing Kaley. I have high hopes for getting this picture again eventually, though.

6.  Do Stampede in a way that would make my Dad proud. I did ok on this one. Not great, but, not terrible.

7.  Finally have the star gazing party that Jana and I planned years ago. Again, did not happen. At this point, I think I need to accept that it will never happen. Maybe someday, years and years and years from now, when we are grannies?

8.  Take the kids to the drive-in. Yep, never happened.

9.  See the following movies: Captain America: Civil Wars (Yep), X-Men, Apocalypse (Yep), Finding Dory (Yep), Independence Day: Resurgence (Yep), The Legend of Tarzan (Nope), Ghostbusters (Yep), and Bad Moms (Yep). This was, indeed, the Summer of Movies. We also saw Jason Bourne and the extremely forgettable Sausage Party.

10. Grow the perfect San Marzano tomato in my garden. I actually have grown numerous perfect San Marzanos. They are delicious and I am somewhat amazed at myself.

11. Finally perfect the "beachy wave" hairstyle. Yeah....not so much. I still have faith that it is possible, however.

12. Photograph the perfect sunrise and sunset.  I got this one half-right. I got the sunset, I just wasn't up early enough to ever catch the sunrise. Well, I was up, I just wasn't in a position to photograph it, darn work schedule and all that jazz.

13. Tour the wineries outside Neighboring City. I actually decided to put this off until the fall; the weather was way too hot this summer for traipsing around a vineyard.

14. Spend a day at the pool with the kids. Vegas, baby! The pool at The Paris was spectacular.

15. Drink my morning coffee on the porch as often as possible. This one was easy; the weekends were made for coffee on the porch.

Ok, so I didn't totally suck. Of course, there is always room for improvement. Tune in tomorrow, when I come up with a random list of crap to challenge myself to accomplish this fall; top of the list: WINERIES!