A True Summer Break

The first two-thirds of our summer were full of travel and family, garden installation and lawn mowing. In contrast, this last month has been light on all of those things, making room for the End of Summer Bucket List.

• Trip to the Zoo? Check.
• Daily visits to the beach? Check.
• Daily walks to the park? Check, at least!
• Reunion with my roller blades? Check (incidentally, a great way to keep up with two kids on big kid bikes!)
• Kite Flying? Check.
• Bug hunting? Check, daily.
• Ice cream slurping? Check (should I be embarrassed to admit... daily?... at least?)

The list could go on.

The real obligations of our world have been rejected in favor of pure, undiluted fun.

with just two weeks left before our days begin with an alarm clock, we have to choose carefully. These last gems of summer entertainment will necessarily be interrupted with important back-to-school reorganization efforts, meetings at school, and renewed attention to the rhythms of daily life. The big ticket items remaining are:

• Introduce the girls to our new canoe
• A bicycle built for four (yeah, I'm a dork), and
• A day trip to Duluth, because what's a summer without time spent tossing rocks into the big lake?