5 on a Friday: Things I Will Miss About Summer

 1. Late bedtimes. I love staying up late and sleeping in. Except I have been setting an alarm and practicing getting up early, even if all I do is lie in bed and watch TV or read a whole book before anyone else wakes up. It has been great to let Minnie play outside until late and tuck her in around 9, knowing she'll sleep until 7 or 7:30. Everyone else drifts off to be when they are ready-- it's a delight.

Read this one morning to prepare for my fall planning sesh with Jack and really liked the advice to notice and adjust. I am someone who gets too married to my plan and then feels bad when I have to deviate

2. Family dinners. We all eat together, and it is a chaotic delight. Well, not all every day because sometimes Ben is gone for work, and usually either Jack or Harry is working and has leftovers when they get home. But! No evening activities, so we are together in the kitchen eating the same (same-ish) food. It reminds me of the panny. We play rose-bud-thorn and pop (a category game where you have to name your favorite thing in the category but can't say the same thing as anyone else and accumulate letters if you do-- first person to spell pop loses), and I harken back to COVID when we went through 2 complete sets of Trivial Pursuit cards, plus an Office-themed version AND a Harry Potter-themed set-- all at family dinners. 

This fall, Cooper, Dorothy, Jack, and I are gone Mondays; Dorothy and Minnie and Cooper are occupied Tuesdays; Dorothy and Coop are out Wednesdays; Jack and Cooper are gone Thursdays. I see lots of dinner shifts in my future **eye roll**

3. POOL. SO much POOL.

4. Lazy afternoon adventures with no agenda

5. SUNSHINE. It is light when I walk Annabel in the morning and almost still light when we walk at night. Soon I will be driving the dive carpool at home at night and leaving my Mondays meetings in the dark and waking up without the sun. 

This summer has been an unqualified delight. The only thing that would have made it better is a family trip, but we have had to pivot to winter break for those since summer is our middle schoolers' busy season (and they BOTH got a beach trip with their extracurriculars this summer)

Cooper in the Pacific

Dorothy in the Atlantic

Minnie says her favorite summer memory is "Basically probably going to parks, and I can tell you one thing that's basically fun: sometimes I do make up, and sometimes I do a summer look and sometimes I do a fall look which is fall-y colors," so it's hard to top that, you know?