Love Your Ordinary

There's one thing I don't like about Independence Day: It marks the middle of summer. Perhaps I need to a glass-half-full perspective on this, but summer is half way over. My kids go back to school in five weeks. Five weeks from today. 

Summer, slow down please.

I love the ordinary of summer. 

No alarm clock in the morning. Afternoons at the pool. Flexibility with dinnertime and bedtime. The longer daylight hours. Lightning bugs. Snow cones. Impromptu lunches with friends. More afternoons at the pool. Our town's old-fashioned walk-up Dairy Queen. Reading fiction books, both my girl and me. Ben's constant request to go outside.

Summer doesn't have to be fancy to be lovely. That's what I love about it.

Mixed in with our ordinary days have been a week on Hilton Head Island, S.C. with my parents, an aunt and uncle, and my siblings and their families. We spent time on the beach and around the pool. We ate delicious food around various tables. We talked and laughed and reminisced and planned. {You can see tons of pictures of all that here.}

And then the day after we got home, Cate went to her first overnight camp {two nights!} and had a blast. I wasn't anxious about it because she was made for camp. After I helped her get her set up, she walked outside with me to hug Daddy and Ben goodbye. And then without hesitation: "I'm going back inside to get to know the other girls better."

She wanted to stay longer than the camp actually lasted and is already talking about going back next year. When I ask about her favorite part of those three days, she says, "Everything."

Ordinary summers for us also include a couple vacation Bible schools -- one is in the evenings this week and the other is a couple hours each morning next week. We've got plans for an amusement park, a visit with a new nephew, another weekend with my family, and hosting friends here.

Ordinary here is the stereotypical summer days mixed with plenty of socializing. I love it here, this time of the year with these people of mine. Ordinarily, I'd write more here, but I'm busy making these memories that matter.

I want to remember the ordinary because I get the feeling I'm going to look back and the little moments are going to be the big moments. 
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I'm linking up this post with Beth Stiff's Three Word Wednesday, Jennifer Duke Lee's #TellHisStory, Holley Gerth's Coffee for Your Heart, and Jill Savage's Hearts at Home Blog Hop.

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