Summer!

Our summer vacation started a week ago, officially, and we have embraced it with open and welcome arms.  When I was a kid, and especially a teenager,  I absolutely abhorred summer. I think there are a few different reasons why I disliked it so much.  Some of the most obvious include the fact that because I grew up in a rural area, summer meant that I really didn’t see my friends very much at all for three entire months.    I loved school and learning, and that structure was gone in the summer. Even though I read a lot of books and practiced my musical instruments a lot, I always felt like I was floundering without direction.  When I was a teenager, my family made me grumpy often, and I made them even grumpier, and I knew that this was going to be the case as I watched summer vacation approaching.  Also, I hate hot, dry weather, so the last part of summer was always completely miserable for me.

Now that I’m a mom and live in northern Minnesota,  I LOVE summer vacation.  Seriously!  The last two summers have been terrific.  We managed to find a perfect blend of kids doing things and lots of relaxed down time to spend spontaneously as a family.  I love the climate next to Lake Superior.  It feels like practically every day is a perfect summer day.  Last summer was so wonderful that I mourned its end and the return to the hectic schedule of the school year.  While I’ve enjoyed all the seasons this year because I love fall, enjoy winter always, and the return to warmer temperatures in the spring is always wonderful,  all throughout the school year I’ve found myself anticipating the freedom for our family’s schedule that happens in summer.

Summer’s here!  Even though I love to teach, I take the month of June off each year, and I’m reading books, taking naps in my hammock, enjoying the green grass and leaves on the trees, and taking time to practice cello, piano, clarinet without being rushed all the time.  Sometimes I even cook real meals for my family that take longer than the usual ten minutes to prepare.  Sometimes I give them a plate of vegetables with hummus and a piece of toast, because it’s summer and why cook?  I’m basking in days that have only one or two things that have to get crossed out on the TO DO list, rather than seventeen things that need to be finished all at once.  This week we’ve gone swimming in creeks, taken bike trips on the lakewalk, gone to the annual used book sale at the library, read hundreds of picture books, and slept in.  Have I mentioned that I love sleeping in?  Oh, how I love sleeping in.

A pack of neighborhood kids roams from one yard to the next, and all week they’ve come up with wonderful things to play together.  They flit from our house to other houses creating all sorts of fun for themselves.  It’s pretty glorious.