It happens every year and it surprises me every year – how fast summer break goes. Here we are almost half-way through July. My 3rd-grader goes back to school in a month. The back-to-school sales have already started and will really kick into gear in the next couple of weeks. And here I am feeling like we’ve barely begun to enjoy the break.
Most summers, I have some thoughts about how relaxing, stress-free and not busy the summer will be. Most summers, I am wrong, especially about the not-busy part. This summer, besides two graduations (mine and my daughter’s), we’ve had a daughter and her husband move back in with us, another think about moving out, an extended family reunion, an academic conference (me), and lingering fatigue from COVID, which makes it hard to check things off the to-do list.
In spite of summer speeding by, it’s also been good. The family reunion was for my dad’s family and some 100 of us met in Yakima, Washington for 4 days of fun and memories – making them and sharing them. My husband and I took 3 of our grandchildren along while their parents remained in Utah. They entertained us greatly, especially the 5-yr old. Once, when our adult daughter that we were caravaning with pulled ahead of us and out of sight, she piped up from the back “Maybe them dead.” OK, then. She kept us in stitches with her funny sayings.
Once this summer, I took our almost-8-year-old up the mountain canyon near our home. Seemed like a good idea at the time…. She’s been before, practically every summer of her life, and yet this summer, she saw a bug in nature and that was the end of that. Screaming and sobbing that she wanted to go home NOW. Because there were bugs. In the outdoors.
We’ve also visited museums (air conditioning!), watched movies, (more air conditioning!), had shave ice, celebrated Juneteenth, Father’s Day and a handful of birthdays. Camping probably isn’t in the cards this year because it sounds like too much work, but we have some additional day trips planned. My youngest Black daughter wants to go visit the museum of the Japanese internment site in Utah, and I want to go see the ruins of Iosepa, the Hawaiian community in Utah. We have more watermelon-mint lemonade and corn-on-the-cob in our future and are looking forward to fresh peaches and homemade ice cream.
Here’s to one more month of the lazy days of summer….
