Fall is in the air

With the end of August fast approaching, I can't believe how much it is starting to feel like fall is approaching. With the start of fall comes football, students returning to campus, and cooler weather. Chuck's been excited for the past week and a half because pre-season football is finally on TV. Our football season tickets for the Illini arrived last Thursday. This weekend was official move-in for all the college students at U of I (luckily we escaped for the weekend). And tonight for the first time in quite a while, I was chilled while sitting outside watching a softball game.

The weekends for fall have already filled up fast. The first Illini football game is in a little less than 2 weeks. Since I only get 2 weekends off a month, all my off weekends are home football games, and for the rest I have to work. My next unplanned free weekend is likely going to be the middle of November. We already have big plans for a few of the games-Chuck's cousins will be joining us for the Iowa game, and my family will attend the Purdue game as well.

With all the students returning to campus this weekend, we could think of no better way to spend it than to get out of town ourselves. In fact, almost everyone we know fled CU this weekend. Chuck, Andrew, Jason and I went out to the lake house, which was nice and relaxing. The weather could have been a little nicer. Yesterday in the afternoon it drizzled a little, but was still mostly warm (although not quite as warm as it has been).

Another end of summer tradition: retiring the tube. Out at the lake house, we usually go through 1-2 tubes a summer (ie, the plastic breaks down, and the air starts to leak out, making the tube unusable). This weekend, we had to finally retire the newest of the tubes. I got to ski a little, but when I went to hop onto the tube, noticed it was a little flat after Chuck, Jason, and Chuck's cousin Todd were on it. Sure enough, we could hear the hiss of air leaking out as I was sitting on it, getting closer and closer to the water. We pulled out the old standby, the sea biscuit (a little 1 person tube that has no padding on the bottom and flips at the first hint of a wave), but the only two people brave enough to try it (Chuck and Todd) called it quits after only a few minutes on that tube.

While at the lake house, it was cool enough to keep the dogs outside all day. We brought all three dogs out, and Oscar rode the boat for most of the afternoon yesterday. Macy got a short ride-she doesn't like the water nearly as much. After we tired of boating, we let the dogs out by the water, and discovered Dagny loves the water. She was even brave enough to jump off the dock willingly to swim after a stick. Unfortunately for her, her long coat took a very long time to dry (we couldn't squeegie her off like Oscar), and we couldn't let her swim today.

We only have one more weekend this year that we'll be out at the lake house. Next weekend, Chuck, Dave, Eric and I are going out for one final time. Hopefully the weather turns just a little warmer (although tonight's perfect camp fire and s'mores weather). Today was sunny, but the water was starting to cool off and it was a little chilly floating in the water on rafts.

I just can't believe how fast the summer went.