June was a busy month, a mixture of delight and despair. June has always been one of my favourite months, because the end of school is something I anticipate for months - I simply prefer having my children home and the flexibility that allows us. It started out lovely. Swinging - endless swinging! Our first trip to the river to swim, and a visit to the coast. Skinned knees. The last day of school. Lazy mornings, buttercups, dancing in Nanie's living room. Three days by the coast in a rental house with my parents. Then we headed for our annual family trip to PEI - and one by one, the four of us dropped with gastro. I didn't take a single photo. We spent two days in a cottage, leaving only to buy Gravol and popsicles at the store, all of us sick as dogs, and then we packed it up several days early and drove the 3.5 hours home.

It was a big blow to my idyllic view of June. We were well into July before my digestive system began to behave itself again, and now our summer is half over, and it feels like all we did was recover.

However, while July has given us a few rough times (hello sickness again), when I'm back with July photos they are still full of joy, just like these are - the good outweighs the bad, the sun outshines the dark. We still have six weeks of summer. Time to go.