Ode to Summer

Well, dang. I'm totally behind once again. I have no excuse. Except all the regs. I'll spare you.

This summer has been, hands down, my favorite one in recent memory. This is not because of anything fancy or spectacular. It's pretty much because it has been the opposite of that.

As I've mentioned before, we were all barely crawling when we came to the end of May. The rat race had officially handed us our tails. We were tired. The one thing I wanted from this summer was to slow down for just a cotton pickin' minute. To rest. Maybe even relax. Summer delivered, and I think I need to thank her publicly.

First, let me just say this. For the past couple of years I've had a little camp at my house in the summer for some sweet preschool children I know. Doing this was a HUGE blessing for me. I got to hand pick the kids I had here. Which also means I got to hand pick the moms. And all of them were some of my faves! It was wonderful to be able to generate income and still spend the summer with my own kids.

But it was work. A LOT of work. Gratifying? Definitely! Exhausting? Yep!

This summer, because of my new work situation, I opted not to do summer school. My kids were super bummed. Some moms were super bummed! Ha! But I knew we needed a chance to sort of move at our own pace. And by our own pace, I mean, slow.

So that's what we did. I was not a very good friend this summer. I did not plan as many play dates as I thought I might. I didn't initiate very often. But I did rest. And I did relax.

More people have told me that I look "rested" in the past few weeks than in my entire life combined. I think this is a nice way of saying, "Wow. You are starting to look less and less like someone who's been dragged behind a bus." Because that's how I've spent the last two years looking. For real.

We spent time at the library. We had dinner at the pool. We visited some fun places around town. We saw friends. We saw movies. We got free lunch.

We made a list at the beginning of the summer of things we wanted to do. Tonight I moved it to the "Trash" on my desktop. At first, I was going to open it and read up on what we forgot or never got around to. Then, I decided I wasn't going to do that. I think everything shook out just the way it was supposed to. No frills. No fuss.

Here's to you summer! You've been a true friend!