In the summer space-time warp continuum

Balance.
Breathe.

Summer is finished. I was so sad to see it go this year. We had such a terrific time. This summer was all about doing and enjoying the moment, savoring the sweet afternoons, warm evening, campfires and even the raccoons. Yes. Racoons (see my previous post). It was less about technology and blogging and computing and working and digging into the hole of tireless despair of overburdened and overworked. I'm done excusing myself from creating new blog posts. I'll keep posting, because this is in many ways the boys book of records and photos, and ways they are growing up, but dear reader if you are wondering where the heck we are and why we haven't updated, well, just assume from now on we are outside, having family game night, riding bikes, playing together, tickling each other, laughing and giggling away from all things digital.

Sometimes I look forward to summer as a time to relax and unwind. To finish unfinished projects. But my thinking has shifted much on this. Summer is actually not the time for these sorts of things. Fall and the dead of winter is. Summer is the time to seize the moment, to suck up each moment of fun. Just because there is more daylight doesn't mean I'll actually do more things (which is part of my more obsolete sense of "finish up in the summer") and this year, we practiced what we preached with reckless abandon.

In brief, summer went like this (with rapid succession delivery said all in one breath): Collin's birthday, camping,  a 2 week visit to Michigan for a girls weekend, and then my friend Karen's wedding and sister in law's wedding shower, boys summer weekly camps, more family camping, fourth of July in Wisconsin (camping) with family, then a family visit (Drew's mom and aunt Jan came for a weekend), more fantastic family camping, a trip to Dallas, another family camping trip, a trip to the lakehouse, the state fair, the first day of kindergarten for Collin and preschool for Owen, Drew's birthday, a trip back to Michigan for my brother's wedding, more family visits (to bring back our dog!) and then finally my birthday, to round out our fun, right down to the day fall started.

Take a breath. It was great. It looked something like this: