No matter how much I vow and declare that our summers are going to be laid back and calm, by the time July rolls around we have turned into the Clampetts. That is not to say that we have loaded up the car and moved to Beverly (Hills, that is), but we are definitely spend our fair share of time on the road. This probably has something to do with the fact that I have never met a road trip that I didn’t just love to pieces, so when we’re not on a schedule, I’m ready to fill ‘er up and hit the highway.

This week, however, the road trip came to us. My cousin Paige brought her little boy to our house Saturday afternoon so that he could spend a few days at what we like to call Cousin Camp. We started this tradition a couple of years ago – when Paige was under the weather and J stayed with us for about a week – and it’s become one of our favorite parts of summer.

We’ve had a great time so far, even if I’ve had to ask the boys to slow down a time or forty because MAMAW CAN’T MOVE SO FAST ON HER BUSTED ANKLE. The good news, however, is that the pool has been the great equalizer. Because do you know who’s still the fastest one in the pool? ME. And that is why we stayed in the pool for approximately three hours today, only pausing to reapply sunscreen and eat a quick lunch at the snack bar.

By the way, today at lunch I ordered sandwiches for the boys and a salad for me, and when I picked up our food a few minutes later, I didn’t see a fork on my tray. So I asked for a fork, and one of the girls behind the counter smiled and said, “Um? We’re out of forks?”

And I said, “You’re out of forks?”

And she said, “Yeah?”

And so I ate my salad with a plastic spoon.

For some reason that makes me very tickled.

Anyway, the cousins had a most excellent day of swimming, and Alex continued to show his strong and unwavering allegiance to goggles.

The child loves him some goggles. He even wears them when he jumps off the diving board. It makes me so happy.

After we wrapped up our pool time, we came home and had some book time. There was also some light saber battle time, but I didn’t get any pictures of that because I was afeared of getting in the middle of the light saber action. MY ANKLE, you know.

Now that I think about it, maybe it would be wise and prudent to milk the “my ankle” excuse as much as I can over the next couple of weeks.

I’m just as sorry as I can be that I wasn’t able to fold all that laundry. MY ANKLE, you know.

Well, I had no choice but to watch fourteen episodes of “House Hunters” in a row. MY ANKLE, you know.

Oh, of course I’ll have that extra piece of chocolate pie. MY ANKLE, you know.

I think this idea has some real promise!

I’ll be certain to keep you posted on my progress.

We’ve spent A LOT of hours at the beach and the pool over the last few days (especially Monday, when Melanie, the kids and I swam to Cuba, but that is another story for another time), so today we decided to mix it up and go play a few games. There’s a big Kids’ Adventure Extravaganza-type place not too far down the road, so we set off in that direction around 9:30 this morning.

It’s important for you to understand that by 9:30 this morning, it was already – and this is just an approximation – 172 degrees outside with a crisp relative humidity of 468 percent. So it was very cool and refreshing. Breezy, really.

When we pulled up to the World-O-Golf-N-Stuff, we immediately decided we needed to commemorate the day with a picture, so the young’uns hopped into an abandoned pirate ship and indulged us.

I would’ve snapped a few more, but quite frankly I was burning up and ready to walk into the air conditioned arcade. We knew that putt-putt was going to be the first activity on our agenda, and I felt like I needed to stockpile all the air conditioned moments I could before I spent an hour trying to hit a golf ball around all manner of tricky obstacles. I mean, I know the PGA Tour is tough and all, but even those golfers don’t have to contend with trying to sink putts in some sort of cave or fiery volcano.

We got to choose between two putt-putt courses, and when Caroline deferred to Alex on the course selection, he went with Lost Lagoon. I was under the impression that Lost Lagoon was a nine-hole course, but it was actually eighteen. Clearly the Lost Lagoon doesn’t mess around, and I don’t mind saying that the course conditions were brutal. While the front nine boasted a good bit of shade, the back nine was so treeless that 1) I stopped at the 13th hole to put sunscreen on my flip-flopped feet and 2) at one point I contemplated crawling underneath a very small oleander bush in the hopes of escaping the blazing sun.

In the end the heat was totally worth it, though, because we had ourselves a blast. Melanie shot about 42 under par and, in all honesty, played the putt-putt game of a lifetime. Caroline knocked the fire out of the ball on more than one occasion and shows great putt-putt promise. Alex could’ve cared less how he did because he was so enthralled with watching everybody else play (if he said, “AWESOME SHOT, MISS MELANIE” once, he said it thirty times), and I shot a solid 36 over par and easily lost two to four pounds of water weight.

So I guess today taught us that Melanie is going to join the LPGA, Caroline is going to apprentice as Mel’s caddy so that she can learn the ropes of the game, Alex is going to be a play-by-play announcer, and I’m going to be the crazy, overheated bystander who follows everybody from hole to hole and looks for shade under shrubbery.

Sounds like we have ourselves a plan.

We had such a blast today. The oil stayed away, the waves were huge, and two kids and two mamas ’bout near wore themselves out playing at the beach.

Not to mention that, thanks to the all the sand, I feel more exfoliated than I have in ages.

We were up bright and early this morning, and if you’re doubting the “bright” part, just look at the sunlight streaming in through the window.

And I tried – REALLY, I TRIED – to take some pictures, but it was a just a wee bit humid and hazy outside.

JUST A BIT.

Anyway, we finished off our day with some pool time and some fried shrimp (never a bad thing), and now the children are sleeping and the grown-ups are watching “The Next Food Network Star.”

And also occasionally eating scoops of cookie dough during commercial breaks.

Happy Monday, y’all!

In light of the cuckoo nature of the last couple of weeks, I cannot tell you how much we enjoyed this past weekend. It was great – so fun and so laid-back. Which, as it turns out, are two of my very favorite weekend qualities.

There were kids running around in silly costumes.

There was soccer.

There was cake.

There was fried chicken.

(I don’t have a picture of the fried chicken. There was far too much fried chicken-related enthusiasm to stop and take a picture.)

There were ferns in funky new hanging baskets that I love, love, LOVE a million times.

There were a couple of texts that made me all teary and weepy and smile-y.

There was a very animated conversation with Martha about these cookies (we sent them to her for Mother’s Day, and she had to describe every single one of them to me in great detail).

SHOCKING, I KNOW.

There was a 30-minute conversation with Mama about everything and nothing.

There was beautiful weather.

(Yes, I see that it’s a tree and not actually, you know, weather. But you’ll just have to remember that the weather was so pretty that I took lots of pictures of trees. Also: IT’S THE BEST I CAN DO, PEOPLE.)

There was “Up In The Air” on DVD. (I liked it when I watched it, but I don’t like it nearly as much today. Mainly because today, whenever I think about it, it makes me sad.)

There was “Survivor” on the DVR.

There were lots of hugs and lots of kisses and lots of laughs.

And more than anything, there was lots of grateful.

Hope your weekend was full of grateful, too.