Three and Me: Summertime

This has been an honest-to-God real summer. None of that "hardly breaking 80 degrees" stuff. I feel like I'm home. I love the ease of getting the kids ready to go outside (bundling up is not as much fun as it looks like it would be-haha!), I love walking up to the playground and seeing all our friends from the neighborhood at any given time, I love just walking up the street to get a bite, or go to the movies, or grab a coffee. I love the sense of community at the lakefront where you are bound to see at least a few people you know when you go for an evening walk or swim after dinner. Lots of happy people and happy dogs running around the beach these days in the soft quieter moments before sunset.

Not to say that we don't miss being near family..we do. But we love the community that we have become entrenched in. It's a little sad to think this time next year we will be saying goodbye to Anna, who has raised Addie since she was born and Gillian since she was 14 months old. But then the girls begin a new chapter of being in school at our neighborhood catholic school that happens to also be our parish.

I am still agonizing over whether to have another child, but that is a purely emotional decision. The girls are growing so fast, and I can easily get verclempt over the idea of how shockingly quiet my house will be one day. All the grating calling for Mama or Papa will be gone, replaced by the deafening stillness of us, and we will ache for that chaos again. My babies will make their way into the world, and with any luck they will stop and look back fondly on these endless days of summer and forgive us for moments of impatience...and maybe even give us a call to tell us how they are doing every now and then.

Here are a few images from the past month from my phone. Tonight we will do more of the same-soaking it all the way in-so we can have some extra warmth to get us through the long, cold winter.