Remembering summertime

School's out this week and all of the sudden there are kids in the roads, kids in the stores, kids on the playgrounds and mothers in full tilt.

It's been two years now since the end of school meant a whole new routine around my house too. When all of the sudden somebody or somebodies were home all day every day.

I loved summer. It was my chance to show my kids the world. As I wrote in my first book, "they can read about it" in books during the school year, but "in the summertime, I get to let them see it, feel it, taste it and touch it."

We went to parks most every day. On hot days, parks with creeks or ponds or rivers or wading pools. We'd meet Dad for lunch some days, we'd get memberships at the Children's Museum some years or at the zoo others. We'd head to the Coast if we needed a change in weather or to spend a day or several days with friends, no entertainment but a shovel and the water and sand already there.

Stay-at-home days were filled with adventures at the creek or at the common lot. Rainy ones were spent jumping on pillows from the couch, listening to music from M.C. Hammer to Pyotre Ilyich Tzaikovsky.

There was always a trip to Utah for family gatherings, and a chance to explore a national park or camp along the Coast. There were hikes in places cold and wet in the Pacific Northwest, and hot and dry in southern Utah.

It was adventure. It was discovery. It was summertime.

I loved it.