Ghost of Memorial Day's Past

Yay labor memorial day! I love this time of year. For some reason, I always call it labor day even though I know it's memorial day. Both red white and blue holidays. Anyway-It is OFFICIALLY summer (sorry June 21, you're out and memorial day and its bbqs are in). Sure, I miss the days when summer meant "break", but I get almost as excited as an adult. I did a few really smart things in my adult days to preserve the love that is summer. The first one was sort of an accident (sort of). I married a man with a beach house. Okay, it's not techhhhnically his, but it's his family's. And it's on the beach block. And I am sort of obsessed with it. The best part? Even when other parts of the family are in the main house, there is an apartment over the garage we can stay in too. And outdoor showers to boot. Thanks J, your great grandparents must have built that house knowing you'd marry a beach lover. They were correct. Another thing I've done is schedule our summers with summery events and make sure to change the food in our kitchen to "summery" foods. We also grow our own fruits and veggies. If that doesn't say summer, then what does?

Oh, and also, we are not even going to the beach this weekend, but I do plan to do some time consuming awesome projects for the house. There are a few I'm thinking of, and I'm hoping I can at least finish one or two. Maybe we will repeat Relaxy Saturday. Maybe we should repeat it every Saturday. That's not possible, but it's a good dream.

For old time's sake, let's reminisce of memorial days past....

There was last year, when I am 99% sure we spent memorial day in Ohio. I can't remember. I loved my days in Cbus, but time away from J was not my favorite, and I have somewhat blocked it out. Let's just pretend this was from that weekend and go with it:

Two years ago, me and five of my grad school friends used husband's family's aforementioned beach house and had a week of farewell before we all took off for internships. It was one of the best weeks I can remember. Even on the rainy days, we outlet shopped, watched movies, and drank wine. Oh, and Kelly and I managed to break the dryer on the last day.... and J's mom had to find a replacement in a mom and pop shop because they didn't have any that we could find.... Oops. Sorry, Mimi.

Wearing all of our clothes we bought that day at the outlets. Classy.

 There was the days of late college and grad school when memorial day meant my friend Laurie's birthday (which is actually today!) in OCNJ/AC. Laurie is now a mommy to be(!) and our daily talks consist of what blog we read and what nursery items are cute. Oh and oggling Kim Kardashian's engagement ring (we like Khloe's better pre-halo). Hello, Murmur & Princeton. Oh, and HAPPY BIRTHDAY LAURIE!

Jamie used to rave with glow sticks and old school blackberrys....

In college memorial day consisted of parties (maybe even toga parties) on friends' decks and day trips to the beach. It's a wonder that I survived those days. It's a wonder anyone survived those days. But they were the best of times. I also have some sweet mixed CDs from those days.

My brain doesn't reach far enough back to high school to know SPECIFICALLY what we did on memorial day, aside from walking down to the parade in Yardley. And in elementary school, riding my bike down the street fully decorated. I can probably tell you where I stood at each parade I observed. I can definitely tell you that our objective in middle school and high school was to find cute Yardley boys. Check out Yardley, who wouldn't love to grow up in this town?

That's Yardley on a non-parade day. In the right hand side of the pic you can see Yardley Pizza  (second to Vince's Pizza if you ask me). But on parade day, either one is quite satisfying after watching firetrucks and other red,white, and blue-age go by. Here's Yardley on Parade Day:

Look at all those bikes. I think one year I won the bike decorating contest. Did I mom? Is that true? Well, let me tell you, I am taking my our future kids to the Yardley memorial day parade, hiring Shannon to help me come up with a brilliant decor plan, and my kid will kick some memorial day ass. Well, they will win.

Such a cute town and such a cute parade. Summers in Yardley were the literally picturesque, family-centered apple pie eating, (fine, we didn't eat apple pie, we ate carrot sticks and the occasional ice cream man treat- thanks mom) pool swimming, firefly catching, amazing days and nights. I'm so thankful for that.

And now that I'm a big kid, I'm thankful that we get to have a three day weekend from work. And when you can't be in Yardley or swing a trip to the beach (and don't want to because your commute took ALMOST 3 HOURS TODAY- seriously, I'm lucky I have any brain cells left right now), you can comfort yourself with some dessert made of your strawberries in your backyard. A little something like this:

Yum! Happy Memorial Day!!