I have a little confession to make: despite the amount of complaining I do about summer, about working from home surrounded by unproductive kids and their dirty dishes, about feeling like I’m having a stroke every time I run outside, I actually love summer.

I love dinner on a patio with misters and fans going full blast. I love long walks in the evening when it’s light until ten. I love concerts in the park and sundresses and pedicures and weird sunburns left on that spot on my shoulder I missed with the sunscreen. I love the smell of the neighbor’s barbecue fired up, and spontaneous trips to the snow cone shack.

But here a full third of this summer has passed, and I haven’t had a chance to really lean into it. We started with that mad dash toward the end of the school year, and its ridiculous amount of activity, and it seemed like everyone’s kids were graduating all at once, and then there was the family road trip of the century, and our exchange student’s mother came to stay with us. When she and her daughter left, a former exchange student arrived with her boyfriend for a visit.