This is how we do summer.

What can I even say about the summer of 2011?  What a beautiful, glorious, lazy, busy, exciting, relaxing, perfect summer it has been.  We have cleaned and organized, gone swimming, play doughed, canoed, played on playgrounds in the sticky heat, caught fire flies, ate watermelon, glued and cut, volleyballed, painted and colored, shopped and browsed, camped and s'mored....all in the name of summer.  For several years now I have longed to have a summer like this but just wasn't able to swing it until now.  It has been the summer of my childhood revisited and I, we, have loved every moment of it.

And its not over.  Eric and I are headed to the Dominican Republic with the kids in two days.  We can't wait to experience a new place and lounge on the beach for 7 days.  Its going to be amazing!

And then, the day after we get back I get to go set up classroom at my new job!  That's right- 3 hours a day, 3 mornings a week, I am calling Crawford Street Play School my home away from home.  I am going to be assisting the 3k class and I am so excited about it!  Since I am working, Z will be going during the same hours in the 2k class and Adler will be in 4k.  Its going to be a fun year.  Its going to be so neat to get a bird's eye view into what goes on when my kids are at school. 

I have been obsessed with stopping every few days and taking deep breaths and looking around and taking mental snapshots of what is going on around me- I can't believe I get to live this beautiful life- I know how blessed I am.  It is so easy to get caught up in the hum drums, the small, and sometimes the big, stresses of this world we live in.  But, then I catch my husband's eye as we watch our family enjoying each other on a lazy Saturday evening; I hear my children's giggles as they trace their bodies in chalk; I feel the cold of the sprinkler as we play; I taste the sweetness of a watermelon..... Summer restores my soul and reminds me of the rich blessings in my life.  How GREAT is our God!