The Summer Wanes

I put all the orientations, open houses and back-to-school events in my calendar today. This comes after completing the school supplies and clothing purchases at the beginning of the week. School will officially begin on the 29th, but on Friday we begin the run-up of activities that will get us there in a hurry. So, I thought it as good a time as any to evaluate the summer, such as it was.

June was a birthday, a baptism, the end of school activities and a little vacation for DH and I. Throughout these activities we did a pretty good job of keeping family work, routines, piano practice and such going.

July was filled with girls' camp, scout camp, and high adventure camp--nearly all of which DH had to attend, at least in part. CE attended girls' camp for the first time too. The rest of us had swim lessons, a short trip to Utah and general laziness. Levels were mastered on the Wii. Books were read. Things were drawn and colored. Games were played. Movies and vintage TV were watched courtesy of Netflix. And there was swimming, a great lot of swimming. We completely lost the plot where piano was concerned and family work and routines took a bad beating.

And now here we are mid-way through August, trying to pick up the pieces left after do-nothing July, returning to routines, better executed family work and piano, all in an attempt to ease ourselves into the scheduling wallop that is the school year (since football, soccer, dance, leadership and piano all begin at the same time). We didn't do any of the things on our to-do list; we didn't visit any of the places on our to-see list (not even the library, unless you count quick dashes to pick up reserved books). We reveled in doing nothing and going nowhere. I'm not sure how I feel about this.

In some ways, it was a rare treat and one which won't likely come our way again. There are drawbacks of course, because my children didn't go anywhere, they never left me alone. I quickly learned that one of the reasons why I hardly looked at the piano was because I never had any quiet moments in which I could play without "help" of one kind or another. My children are finally old enough that the oldest two are available for sibling care (CE even sits for others now, Z can trustworthily watch younger siblings for an hour or two before forgetting he's in charge), but they are young enough that they don't schedule themselves in social activities hither and yon yet.

I guess that fleeting sense is why I don't feel more remiss that our summer was an unscheduled monument to stasis, because stasis is really hard to come by, especially in families, especially when those families have growing children. I'm not dreading the beginning of school, nor am I counting days. It's been a good do-nothing summer and has lasted about as long as it ought. We have enjoyed it.

Hail Summer! Long Live Fall!