Trees, Swaying in the Summer Breeze

OK, I guess it's more or less over -- although they are saying we have some 80-degree days coming this week. Still, I've been wearing a lot of long pants lately, and even a jacket for the cool early-morning trip to the bus stop. Of course, that could be just because my temperature control hasn't had a chance to reboot.

But the calendar tells us that the end of summer is just days away. And it's already been a couple of weeks since I celebrated Labor Day in my traditional fashion: I sat at home and mourned the fact that summer had ended basically before it even felt like it started.

So it's perhaps emotional self-preservation that prompts me to look back more intentionally on my summer. Granted a lot of the carefree spirit was leached out of it by the move and all the attendant stress, work, and expenditure... but somehow we still managed to shoehorn our share of summery fun:

• # We didn't spend an inordinate amount of time at camp, but we managed a handful of days.
• # Thanks to one of our new neighbors, the kids were able to swim almost at will.
• # There were a number of picnics, including one that served as a reunion for us with some friends from a previous congregation.
• # I attended (and brought my daughter to) my first minor-league baseball game in a lot of years.
• # We got to have a date at a fine local theater production of "On Golden Pond"...
• # ... and also brought the whole family to a delightful, and absolutely free, outdoor production of "Annie Get Your Gun".
• # You might already have heard about this, but it's worth re-emphasizing that the family vacation consumed about 15% of the summer all by itself.

While I am well-known from sea to shining sea for my generally sunny outlook on life, even a dyed-in-the-wool optimist such as myself can benefit from an effort to remember more of what goes on in my life than working and laundry and running the kids back & forth to childcare. Hope you also have some summer events that you can recall with satisfaction.