Dear Summer,

You always take so long to arrive – all spring the kids are wiggling and squirming in their seats, watching the skies and wishing for wide open spaces, hot days with ice cream and beaches. It’s almost as if you know you’ll barely have a chance to unfold your beautiful, green skirts and flash your sizzling top before fall comes and pushes you to the back of the line again. This year especially, the spring rains stuck around and wouldn’t leave, and it felt like we just barely got a glimpse of you before it was time to say farewell.

We grabbed onto those beach days with you as much as we could. The kids splashed and played and we soaked in your hot sun. But, like always, you came and left with a whoosh of activity that made our heads spin. There were fields, long, hot days on the tractors, cabins with visitors and catching horses. Each week it started all over again in a dizzying whirl, fields, tractors, cabins and horses…

We also squished in the assembly of two, giant, alien-like sprinkler systems that now crouch on the fields… our very own gleaming, metallic monsters. We poured a new dance floor for weddings at the cabins, adopted some babies in the spring… Needless to say it all just added to your merry-go-round rush.

We tried to slow you down a bit with a few campfires and hotdogs, but you just wouldn’t stop, so we gave up and spun along with you, taking small moments here and there to play in the evenings when the work was done for the day.

This picture of course, is to demonstrate our determination to enjoy you, dear Summer, oh, and also to show off our farm smarts – when a farmer’s volleyball net’s been destroyed by the winter, we don’t let it stop us – oh no, we make one ourselves with whatever’s on hand.

So now here we are, and you’ve gone back to wait your turn, and we can only sigh and look over our shoulders a little wistfully, a lot gratefully, as fall comes and whispers sweet nothings about relaxing and time for coffee and let’s just slow down a little…

-Kerri