Farewell summer… you will be missed

Summer is drawing to a close. Ry started back to school last week and Labor Day is Monday. So yes, that means that the season we all love is ending. 

Of course, where I live Summer will stick around til sometime in mid-December, but for many Labor Day means putting away beach umbrellas and thinking ahead to fall. 

I mean, Starbucks has already released their seasonal favorite, the Pumpkin Spice Latte (seriously? In August?) But before we all get our PSL on let's reflect back on Summer 2014. 

I had big plans for this summer. I am not going to lie. I planned to take my kids to the park, to the beach, to the zoo. And I planned to get my stubborn 2-year-old (almost 3-year-old) potty-trained. 

Yeah... we didn't do most of that. We did go to the beach, but mostly we stayed home, ran through the sprinkler and just enjoyed a slow down during the longest days of the year. 

And let me tell you something my friends, it was glorious. GLORIOUS. There was something utterly blissful about not having anything scheduled. There was something peaceful about waking up in the morning and not have somewhere to be or something we had to do. 

Sure, we had certain obligations that couldn't be missed, like church VBS and a few birthday parties, but for the most part we just spent time together. We enjoyed each other's company we spent A LOT of time outside. We visited the library multiples times a week. We watched movies at home. We ate hotdogs. We sat on our front steps and waved at traffic and laughed every time someone waved back. 

We slowed down. We slowed way down. 

Friends, I can't tell you enough how wonderful this was. We took time to enjoy the summer when our children were one and two. We will never get that back. 

So no. We didn't spend the summer in swim lessons or the toddler tumbling class I had planned on signing my kids up for... but we ran through the sprinklers like it was our jobs... and that I will never regret.