Thursday Thirteen: 13 Things I Love About Summer
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Okay, technically, it’s not summer yet, but once we start our summer break, it’s summer as far as my family is concerned. So, here are my thirteen favorite things about summer:
1. Fewer socks in the dryer. Tell me I’m not the only person who hates matching up piles and piles of socks from the clean laundry. I pass the chore onto the kids as often as I can, but I love sandal weather so that nobody has to match socks.
2. Staying up late. I am a night owl at heart. I’d rather be up late, than go to bed early any day. I love reading, writing, playing online games, playing the Wii, and messing around with blog stuff after the house is quiet and everyone else has gone to bed. And, I can do that because in the summer I can…
3. Sleep in! As I’ve gotten older I’ve found that I don’t stay up as late as I used to and sleeping in doesn’t last as late into the morning either, but I still love waking without an alarm clock.
4. No coats. I hate wearing coats and heavy winter clothes. I love being able to go outside and enjoy some sunshine and fresh air without bundling up.
5. Swimming. I don’t love this one as much as my kids do, but I do enjoy being in the water and hanging out at the pool with my kids…even though we do have to baste in sunscreen every hour on the hour. We should invest in a sunscreen company.
6. Planning and organizing. I love planning much more than actually implementing, so summer is a wonderful time of imagining and planning the perfect “next” school year — you know, while it still seems so shiny and exciting and new, just before it becomes boring old “this” school year, which never sounds nearly as exciting as “next” school year.
7. The Curriculum Fair. Our local fair is always in July and my wonderful husband usually takes the kids and goes to visit his parents for the weekend, so that I can have a mini-retreat of shopping, dining with friends…and planning.
8. Back-to-school sales. I can already smell the distinctive scent of fresh crayons, reams of paper, and brand-new dry erase markers (though you have to be careful sniffing those). I was in Wal-mart this weekend and saw that they were already preparing the back-to-school aisle. Ten-cent spiral notebooks, twenty-cent crayons and thirty-cent glue, here I come!
9. Fresh foods. Okay, I’m not the most health-conscious person in the world, but even I can appreciate the abundance of fresh fruits and vegetables that summer affords — tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, and strawberries. Yum! Are fried green tomatoes still a fresh vegetable (or fruit, as the case may be)?
10. Grilling out. Just about anything is better cooked on the grill. We got our deck enclosed a couple of years ago and it’s so nice to sit out there…and watch my husband do the cooking for a change. 😉
11. Birthdays. We have three summer birthdays, mine included, and our anniversary. I don’t care how old I get, I love my birthday. I admit it: I love getting presents and cards and birthday wishes. There. I said it.
12. Vacation. We don’t always go away on vacation in the summer, but Brian usually takes a week or so off and we get to enjoy some much-needed family time. He’s a night-owl at heart, too, so we enjoy his week off when everybody can stay up late and sleep in the next day.
13. Free time. I love the extra free time that summer brings — time to catch up on a good book or projects that I never seem to time find for otherwise, longer days and later evenings (perfect for catching lightening bugs)…or, you know, just sipping sweet tea and playing Mah Jong online.
What’s your favorite thing about summer?
Kris Bales is a newly-retired homeschool mom and the quirky, Christ-following, painfully honest founder (and former owner) of Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers. She has a pretty serious addiction to sweet tea and Words with Friends. Kris and her husband of over 30 years are parents to three amazing homeschool grads. They share their home with three dogs, two cats, a ball python, a bearded dragon, and seven birds.
I'm with you on the back to school sales! But my favorite is summer fruit. I wait for fresh peaches all winter. So good!
I love your list! I agree with all of them. 🙂 I like the smell of new crayons too! I am looking forward to the new year.
Oh yeah! 1,5,6,9 & 13!! I used to love TT, I didn't know it was back up and running. Thanks for the heads up!!
Oh I feel refreshed just reading your list! I didn't even think about the less socks thing. Brilliant!
i absolutely love the fewer socks!! also, not having to search for socks when we're going somewhere. flip flops!
Ok, you have really changed your blog.. (lol) I have not been here in a really long time.. It looks really good!!!!!!
Fewer socks and no coats are definitely on my list as well! The other big thing on my personal list is our annual week at a cabin up North in the woods. No TV, no Internet and a really good time. I think it's the one week of the year that I really relax.
I second your list and will add my shrinking gas (heat) bill. It dropped from $83 for April to $17 for May. 🙂 I could put it on a monthly budget but I like having that extra money to do stuff in the summer.
Love this list! One of my favorites is on the list — no coats! It's so much easier to go places when I don't have to have piles of coats to deal with.