A few things that have happened:

Skipper and a friend attended the Scandinavian midsummer festival with me. 

School ended. Duchess graduated from middle school.

We dog-sat again. (And napping happened. There are a lot of nice things about caring for a dog who is old and willing to nap a lot.)

We said goodby to Duchess, who's off at rowing camp for a month. (A MONTH OF ROWING.) I'm not sure she'll notice we're not around. 

And we went, at last, to Great Wolf Lodge, a place Skipper has been nagging us for years to visit. Because it is a hotel - with a waterpark inside it - next to a freeway, Cook and I weren't exactly eager to fulfill her dream. But this summer, we badgered the Rockstars into joining us there, and made the thing happen. And it was pretty fun. It was certainly different than our normal weekends. Here are photos of us all making silly faces. And we accidentally ate lunch on the way home in a good Mexican restaurant in Centralia. (They have a bunch of grumpy signs posted about how they DO NOT SERVE CHIPS, and then they give you a free bowl of pickled carrots to snack on instead. It's really good.)