|
|
When this issue of the paper hits newsstands there will be less than a week until school starts, officially putting an end to summer. The summer months always seem to pass so quickly and this summer felt like it went even faster than usual.
One of my goals is to take my kids to states they haven’t been to each summer, so we started our summer a six-state road trip the day after school ended. The day after we returned, my uncle was found dead in his home. It was heartbreaking to lose a man I loved so much. It also set in motion a project that would dominate the rest of my summer.
My uncle had no children and his wife died last year, so he left his home to my cousin and I. I see it as his final act of kindness and generosity toward us. It has, however, been a time consuming project to prepare it for sale. Whenever I’ve had free time, I’ve been in Gaylord working on the house. My wonderful family members who live in the Gaylord area have also spent many hours working on it.
The sudden loss of my uncle, the fact that I now owned real estate two and a half hours away and the subsequent to do list had me living in a state of stress and anxiety that made the first month of the summer pass in a blur. That subsided a bit after the kids and I met up with some friends for family camp at Lake Geneva. Time in the woods always seems to settle me down.
The kids kept busy with activities such as tennis, soccer, theater camp, swimming lessons, Christian camps, swimming and so on, and suddenly it was the end of August. We capped the summer off last week with the second annual multi-generational sibling trip to Valleyfair with my siblings, my kids and I.
I don’t go on all the rides like I used to when I was a youngster, but the rides, the food, the lights and the sounds all make me feel like a kid again. By the end of our recent visit, I was running with my daughter from the tilter to the old fashioned cars to get as much in as we could before the park closed. As we exited the car we were in, I saw my son getting into another one. He ended up being the second to last rider and got to drive around the track solo.
I love having time to just cut loose from the daily grind and have fun with my kids, and I love to see them doing things on their own for the first time and gaining some independence. The magic of summer seems to make those opportunities more plentiful.
This summer was not what I or any of my family had planned. There was loss and more stressed than any summer in recent memory. But it was summer and good times were had and memories were made, nonetheless.