The Bradner Bunch: How I Spent My Summer Vacation

When my children returned to school this week they were faced with the age old question, "What did you do this Summer?" Ella's teacher even made answering this question an assignment from which the class is going to make a book.

As I sat looking over my files of pictures tonight I was reflecting on all I had done this summer. While my blog has served the purpose of recording most of the activities my family was involved in over the last three months, I did notice a few pictures of things I forgot to tell you about.

As the Summer comes to an end won't you take a look at these.

How I Spent My Summer Vacation 2008

I carted around my children.

In doing so, I came to the realization that Marley needed a new nickname. I started calling her the "Multi-tasker". Every time I was rounding up the kids to get into the car, I had to wait for Marley to run and get something. She can not ride idly in the car. She always has to be doing something. It used to be that she would grab a book. Then she started grabbing two or three books. Then she started playing with a deck of cards. By the end of the summer we had to deal with this. This is Marley doing a 100 piece puzzle on the ride to my mother's house. For those of you who don't know, my mother lives 3/4 of one mile from my house. It takes us exactly three minutes to get there. My Multi-tasker can not waste three minutes.

I completely missed posting about the High School Musical Theater Camp the girls attended at EPAC. It is hard to get any pictures in the dark theater.

But I got some behind the scenes. Ella made lots of friends.

This is Marley and Tori waiting to get their certificates at the end of their show. Tori joined us all the way from Philly for the second week of camp. She is the daughter of a girl I grew up with in my church. It was nice to get to know Tori more and have her become friends with my daughters. She is promising to come back next year.

This is the praying bunny we found in our front yard one Sunday morning. He sat there for a really long time. He appeared to be praying. Honest to God. Too cute!

This is the Diaper Cake my sister and I made for our cousin Tasha's baby shower. Isn't this cool? It was so much fun.

Marley in front of the Hanover Public library.

She posed for this picture as we walked to the Dutch Days Festival. Marley and I were able to enjoy this day together while Ray and Ella were busy with other plans. It fact, it is the day she decided to start scrapbooking and we worked for two solid days getting her books started. I just love how this picture turned out. It just captured the fun moment we were sharing.

My presence was often requested at performances that my girls were conducting. They would practice for hours and then I got to watch the shows. This was the last show of the summer.

The fashion show by Marley, Ella and Madi.

This one was set to music.

and went on for a long time

in fact my camera batteries died during this fashion show

but not before this beauty came down the run way.

It went on for so long that by the time it was over, we were all very hungry and I needed to make lunch quickly so we could get to the pool in time to meet our friends. Lunch is never easy at my house. This day I had four people to feed and I was insisting on something healthy. Everyone had to have some fruit. As each person gave my their choice, I was rapidly washing the fruit and placing it on the cutting board. I turned off the faucet and turned to find this staring back at me. Now this is what I call a Happy Lunch. I had to stop and snap a photo.