It’s official: Happy Summer, Friends.

Just a cheerful dose of summery things here today.

Enjoying lately…

Father’s Day Triple Berry Pie
My mom’s pie crust recipe and whatever berries we had in the refrigerator (strawberries, blueberries and the last picked over raspberries) with a cup of sugar and a tablespoon or so of flour added. And then I always dust the top of the crust with a motherload of sugar because a heavy sugar-dusted crust is my favorite thing about a pie.

Little Brother Shenanigans
Sitting on faces and so forth.

Dock Picnics

Summer Treats

Ice cream sandwiches will forever be my favorite ice cream truck treat, but the kids are sold on red dye.

Larry the Frog
I know, I know. We always go back to Larry with the names, and I’m sorry about that. But look at him. Totally a Larry.

Sand Dollar Season

The gulf feels like bath water this time of year, and if we’re lucky to have sand bars at sunset, they’re often covered with sand dollars and sea stars. The kids will collect several, bring them in for pictures and oohs and ahhs and take them back to release them.

The Father’s Day Gift Huddle
We made the mini hardbound book from Pinhole Press, and it turned out beautiful.

Water, Water, Water.
Our morning all-call texts for summer fun with friends always follows with ideas that involve water–it’s too hot for anything else. We rotate pool, beach, splash pad. Pool, beach splash pad.

His Little Voice
He doesn’t like to mispronounce things and quickly fixes the way he says things once he figures it out, so I’m hanging on to all the little boy talk and precious mispronunciations for as long as I can. Currently loving “Here comes the Jerbage Truck!”

Dinosaurs Walks

And as you head out in the water for family fun this summer, here’s a photography post from last summer: 48 Creative Ways to Capture Water Fun.

Because we thought the end of May and all these recitals and graduations and school projects just weren’t enough to make our life crazy, we booked a tonsillectomy surgery for Nella in the midst of it all. I know. We’re nuts. With school and travel plans and recovery schedule though, it’s what worked best. I figure summer will be all the sweeter, getting everything out of the way. These last few weeks of the school year feel a little bit like labor anyway, so you could say I’m nesting. Promise, no painting or brussel sprouts though.

While pretty much everything I intentionally read encourages a slow, purposeful, pared down lifestyle, sometimes that advice–or too much of it, at least–creates the same kind of stress for me as a fast and full and cluttered life. Because it makes me feel like I’m doing something wrong. Sometimes our life is fast and full and cluttered, not because we make bad choices or have the wrong priorities, but because it just is. For little windows of time. So I open up those windows, accept them for what they are, and learn to take slow breaths on fast days. Find pockets of peace among the crazy, create them when I can, but hold my hands up roller coaster style and laugh when the world is rushing by quickly, knowing the ride will slow down soon. And when I get really good at this, I can read the slow living advice and take in the parts that inspire me. And I can wave to my meditating, tea-sipping friend who sold all her belongings to live a more purposeful life on a farm where she turns clay into pottery and sheep wool into blankets (when she’s not doing yoga or writing poetry)–and know that each of our lives are good and meaningful, and we’re both doing the best damn job we can.

Things might be a little fast and crazy lately, but this open window also holds a lot of sunshine, and we’re enjoying every bit of it.

It was June, and the world smelled of roses. The sunshine was like powdered gold over the grassy hillside. ~Maud Hart Lovelace, from the mentioned-on-You’ve-Got-Mail-so-it’s-automatically-cool book Betsy-Tacy and Tib

Enjoying lately:

Swims.
Because slipping into the water and gliding fluidly always serves as a slow-down.

Mildred & Phyllis.

Our new tacky old lady yard flamingos. We have to be careful about what we’re saying around them though because Phyllis is a big ol’ gossip, and she’ll have your secrets scattered all around town.

Breakfast scenes.
Soon…more of this. No more school drop-offs or morning hustle. I love the breakfast hour so much. 

That there little apron was made by my friend Nici–you can use code EXPLORE on her site for 30% off all kid and baby, including this apron)

Summer Night Catch.
So many frogs around here lately. Dash is fearless.

Clean Room Record

I’m riding them like Zoro for it, but we’re going on Day 8 of a completely clean room.

Little Teacher

Nella’s teacher made us a big 3-ring binder of stuff to work on over the summer. Lainey begs to help her with it every morning, and I simply love walking into this scene. See–pocket of peace amid the crazy.

Popsicle Cheers.

Presents Just Because.

Brett’s all smiles last week when an Amazon box shows up on our door, and I open it to find this truck. “Who ordered this?” I ask, knowing perfectly well it was Brett and happy for once that it isn’t some As Seen on TV gadget like the order that showed up two weeks ago with an extendable grabby-hand picker-upper. “I got it for Dash, isn’t it cool? I thought he needed a better truck.” What’s cooler is watching them take it out of the box together and pushing the buttons to make it glide across the floor and lift the dump tray. Dash is ecstatic and looks up at Brett, knowing full well his daddy got it for him for no good reason other than love.”You know,” Brett continues, “I researched so many trucks to find this one. This one’s the best.” He takes it further a couple minutes later. “You should tell your blog people about this one. Tell them I found it.” Very well then. Folks, researched and recommended by Brett himself: The Caterpillar Toy Truck. Dash fell asleep holding his blanket and his truck that night. And walked out of his bedroom all sleepy-eyed the next morning, clutching bad boy Cat, ready to play.

Rainy Day Friends.

Weekend Donut Run.

Holiday Weekend Barbecues.

I taught him the art of shucking corn.

My favorite way to eat corn-on-the-cob, discovered from a friend a few years ago: Melt a stick of butter in a bowl and add a couple tablespoons of honey, the juice from one lime (I add a lot of zest too), one finely chopped jalepeno and salt and pepper. Let that bowl sit for several hours to get all the flavors in (you could probably actually soak your corn in it) and then brush it heavily on the corn before serving. And by heavily, I mean like BATHE those little shuckers in it. And then keep a bowl of it on the table so you can keep adding more butter to every bite.

Late Night Pool Sparklers.

Hospital Love.

Nella’s doing really well after surgery. The whole experience so far has been so much better than we expected, and we’re all so proud of her.

Slow, quiet, purposeful or fast, full and hanging on for the ride…whatever your day holds, may it bring some little happies. Namaste.

There’s a wad of cash, rolled up like sushi and secured with a hair elastic, tucked in Lainey’s top drawer. It’s an impressively thick roll with a 5 dollar bill secured on the outside, and with the girth of the wad and the sight of the “5”, at a quick glance it looks like it could be a $500 bill–like maybe she’s a baller. But really there’s a bunch of wrinkled ones underneath that 5 for a total roll of roughly $22–enough for three Shopkins mystery packs, a Dr. Pepper Lip Smacker, another plastic charm for her necklace and two puzzle erasers. In other words, she’s rich as hell. The money’s been collected over time–from tooth fairies and grandparents and the one time I was so tired, I paid her $5 to brush my hair and massage my head–and has been sitting in the drawer for a while now, which is more impressive than the wad itself because 8-year-olds who don’t need to spend new dollars right this second on hair chalk and stick-on fingernails are the kind of kids who will have a down payment for a house when they graduate high school.

But then the weekend came around, and Sister had mall dreams. Mall dreams are the very first buds of what will, over the years, mature into farmer’s market dreams or downtown Main Street dreams or maybe brunch-at-a-cute-coffee-shop dreams, but at 8 years old nothing’s more dreamy on a Sunday morning than picking up a sugar-dusted Auntie Anne’s pretzel from the food court and zig-zagging through mall tchotchke kiosks to get to Claire’s where you can spend your hard-saved roll of cash on dangly feather clips for your hair and sparkly hand sanitizer holders that clip onto your backpack.

I decided to take all three kids which, I admit, was a mistake. Brett offered to keep Dash, but he saw his sisters walking out the door, accessorized to the moon which clearly said, “We’re on our way to do something awesome,” and he lost it–didn’t want to be left out. So all three it was.

The shit hit the fan when, after promising the little ones a carousel ride, we waited at the carousel for the clerk to come back. He never did, so we walked away, and everything went sour. Lots of crying, lots of refusing to walk, lots of people walking by, smiling “Oh honey.” I brought a single stroller and tried to hold one kid on a hip while pushing the other, but it was too hard so I stacked up both of them in the stroller which led to kicking and more crying.

But the climax? I was weaseling the stroller through some shirt racks, hurrying Lainey to pick something out, shushing the little ones and promising them we’d buy a balloon or a lemonade or a pony if they’d hang on just a few more seconds–and I heard a woman say, “M’am?”

I turned to see the twenty-something store associate, adorable as ever, holding a pair of Batman underwear from one finger, her arm stretched as far away from her body as she could get it. And I suddenly figured out where they came from–from the basket of the stroller. I had thrown them in there a few days ago after a pee accident in another store and forgotten to remove them.

“Are these underwear yours?” she asked.

And this is where I tell you that motherhood is 2% effort and 98% humility.

“Own it proud,” I told myself. Retrieve those damn underwear like you dropped a hundred dollar bill.

I pulled my shoulders back, flashed a grateful smile and leaned forward to take back what was mine.

“Why yes,” I answered. “Yes. Those are my dried-up, peed-out Batman underwear. I’ve been wondering where those were. Thank you so much.”

I tucked the underwear in my purse, turned to gather the kids and stopped only to call back to the associate.

“And, um, Ma’am?” I held up the pink t-shirt Lainey was eyeing. “If you have this in an 8, we’ll take it.”

Heck yeah, we paid for it in ones.

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Enjoying less embarrassing but equally adventurous this week:

#squadgoals

Nella’s Crown Royal Bag
My dad filled it with Costa Rican coins and gave it to the kids, and now it’s her purse of choice for outings which is a little bit amazing.

Matching
We’re on a roll lately. You can take Full House away from the girl, but you can’t take the Olsen Twins away from…wait, this doesn’t even make any sense. Nevermind.

Naples City Dock
We had some time to kill while Lainey was at a birthday party downtown, so I took the little ones to the dock to watch fishermen bring in their catch (saw a baby shark catch!) and pelicans loiter for scraps.

Summer skies
Since it’s an enjoying post, I can’t exactly rant that the heat and humidity has arrived with its bags, and it’s here to stay for a long while (sweaty thighs for days!). But the accompanying skies are beautiful–as blue as ever with little cloud fluffs and the promise of summer fun to come.

Thirst Quench
Is there anything better on a hot day than finding a place that sells cold Cokes in a bottle? Or settling in a window seat at a pizzeria to skip the people watching on the outside in exchange for gazing at your own dreamy-eyed lovies next to you? No, there is not.

Poolside Poop.
As in Poop the Barbie, who pushes Naples indecent exposure laws to the limit. The topless beaches are in Miami, Poop!

Family Swim
Way more fun than the mall.

“Higher!”
What they want, what I hope to support…go higher! Higher! HIGHER!

Happy Tuesday! Washing all the underwear today!