Crammin

School starts one week from now.

Holy crap!

But what about summer?? We never even made a summer to do list. It has just passed us by this year, and that makes me so sad.

I have to admit, I am ready for school to start. Although I love the lazy mornings, and not having to have anything planned for the day, I also believe my time with the boys was more quality during the school year than it has been this summer. The fighting has really beat me down. I wish I could say it wasn't as bad as I'd thought it might be, or as bad as those few snow days during the year foreshadowed, but unfortunately, it was at a fever pitch for a good part of the summer and it just makes me tired.

When the boys fight all the time, it beats me down because it makes me think that all of the compassion/kindness/treat others as you'd like to be treated is just not sinking in. These are the fundamental things that I hope to pass on and teach them. Being kind to others and being a compassionate person are the cornerstone of what I am trying to stand for to my kids, so when they are everything but to each other, I just lay in bed wondering what I'm doing wrong. When my girlfriends visited recently, we shared, as always, what our biggest crosses were that we were bearing, and this was mine.

I'm sure someday, they will love each other. When I was in 8th grade, I hated both my younger brother AND my older sister. Now I love them dearly. I try to explain that when Daddy and I are gone, they will still have each other, and that they are the only ones in each other's lives that will remember and understand what their childhood and upbringing were like. That's a powerful thing and nothing you can share with anyone else. And, I know someday, they will know this. But it's the gettin' to that point that is so hard for me.

Sooooooooooooooo----there are so many things I wanted to do this summer that did not get done. We were just gone so much. It was fun but it was just sooo short. And I wonder if each year as we age, it will feel like it goes faster and faster. And I know I will feel I didn't appreciate it all enough.

So in light of that, we have put together a "cram it all in because summer's almost over" list that we hope to accomplish this week. Here's what we put together this morning:

And today, we were able to cross off pool, and we had a really great day together.

And, I know it's not all about the "stuff" that you do, but the time you spend together, and it's mostly the little, no cost things that you do together that they will remember. So hopefully the talks we had on road trips, the many fires and marshmallows we roasted at home, movies we watched, and time talking in the garden about how things grow will be what they remember.