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One thing about being gone for much of June is that it took forever for me to feel like it was really, truly summer. In Paris, it was cool and cloudy, and the Michigan spring had been so cold and gloomy before we left. Up until last weekend, our family hadn't spent any time at Lake Michigan, hadn't been covered in sunscreen and sand, hadn't eaten inappropriate amounts of ice cream or stayed up to watch the sun set over the water or fallen asleep in the car, exhausted from a day of swimming in a pool with a diving board.

We've remedied that since we've been home, with a family reunion in Grand Haven (pool, lawn games, the same homemade vanilla ice cream we've been having there since I was a little girl), a trip to South Haven and Saugatuck (sandcastles, dinner out at Wally's, frisbee in the sand, and more ice cream), and a Sunday afternoon at the beach in Holland (with a stop for ice cream on the way home). We've caught fireflies, made blueberry pancakes for breakfast, instituted happy hour on the side porch as much as possible, dragged the sprinkler out, and spent at least one night in the hot tub looking at the stars way past our bedtime.

Then, this past weekend, we had two wonderful nights with good friends at their cottage. It meant paddle boarding, sandy hands reaching for snacks on the beach, hikes in the dunes, morning coffee and nighttime guitar on the deck, five very blond little heads at the dinner table (Luke's prayer: "Dear God, please help everyone to get more and more healthier and awesome, Amen") and reading bedtime stories, grown-up mishaps after the kids were in bed, holding other peoples' babies, water balloon launchers, great food, tons of laughter. Summer is here, indeed, and I've never been more glad and grateful for all the normal things.

Good Things, May 2012

Is there anything quite as hopeful and happy as Memorial Day Weekend? Especially when the weather cooperates with 90's and sunshine, it's such a great reward for enduring a midwestern winter and spring, and it's such a great feeling to have the entirety of June, July, and August stretching out before us.

This weekend, we spent almost every possible second outdoors. I planted my window boxes (red geraniums, as always, plus a bunch of herbs that I will try not to kill before the 4th of July), Jason and I stained hundreds of shingles for the new garage and painted the exterior trim, and of course we ventured to the beach - two days in a row - to soak up the sun with family and friends, to come home sandy and tired, to splash in the freezing water (or go under, if you're Annie), to eat some traditional summer favorites. Good things abound, both this weekend and this month:

Jemma's wrote a list of some friends on the chalkboard . . .

 . . . and made me this sweet placemat for the Mother's Day Tea at preschool.

Making a fort for ponies in the front yard out of random materials on a lazy Saturday morning.

An impromptu walk on "The Secret Path" one afternoon after school.

Kite Festival in Grand Haven.

Jemma (high score!) at her end-of-year bowling party.

Jersey Junction to celebrate Annie's AWESOME performance at the elementary school talent show.

Homemade cherry pie.

Saturday night dinner outside.

Gymnastics at the beach.

Jumping waves and playing with my parents on a Sunday afternoon.

Blondies in the breeze on Memorial Day.

Traditional summer stop at Redamak's for burgers.

And Blue Moon ice cream at Sherman's on the way home.

Mother's Day 2012

I say that we don't really have a Mother's Day tradition, and it's true. Some years we're with my extended family, some years we're with Jason's, and some years we're on our own. But it seems like one way or another, at least two or three of the holidays since I've been a mother myself, we've ended up hiking at Dune State Park, one of my very favorite places on earth. And that's what we did today: picnic lunch on the beach, phone calls to both grandmas en route, climbing the big dune and jumping back down, collecting ladybugs, stopping for ice cream on the way home. I'm not going to pretend that there wasn't the usual amount of bickering and "she looked at me!" and "but it's my turn to sing!" and "my legs are tired," but there isn't much that homemade cards and Anthropologie gifts, a good hike to the beach, and a good bedtime story later at night can't solve. So maybe this is our new Mother's Day tradition.

Heat

Since returning from Florida, it's been nearly 80 and sunny here every day. We've been walking around in stunned euphoria: eating ice cream, playing in sprinklers, wearing tank tops, embarking on a night run at 7:15 p.m. wearing shorts and a tank and coming home, sweaty, to drink a Blue Moon on the front steps. Getting back into the groove of regular life has been a little tough to manage in light of the sudden summer environment, and I confess that kindergarten forms may have been hastily turned in at the last minute, I forgot to get my allergy shot for a week, and doing anything besides staying at the playground after school pick-up seems annoying. And though the heat and sunshine for mid-March seems like the tiniest bit of bad karma (like, we might have to pay for it with an April where it rains every day), we are basking in the glory of every warm and sunny moment: Shamrock shakes outside on St. Patrick's Day, a Sunday hiking Dune State Park and picnicking at the beach, dinner eaten on a blanket on the front lawn.

Jemma continues to be her sweet, silly self. She is obsessed with my phone's Siri function and specifically wants to know what Siri's middle name might be. (We have asked; Siri has no reliable answer.) We have her spring conferences at pre-school on Thursday, and we fully expect to hear that she is ready for next year and the full-day challenges that it might bring. She reads more and more words every day, counts well into the hundreds, and loves to be given math problems to solve. (We are still working on her remembering to look before she crosses the street, though . . .)

Annie is, right this minute, at piano lessons, where she is working on Au Claire de la Lune. She has a million questions about everything, all day long, and she spends much of her time doing her hair seven times until the braid looks just right, jump-roping backwards on one foot, and eating adult-sized portions of everything at every meal. She loves writing to her new pen pal, Aunt Lisa, and telling anyone who will listen about how she gets to be a flower girl in her uncle Brett's wedding next winter. (After a mere fifteen years of dating, my brother finally got around to making it official with the woman our girls have always called Aunt Meagan. My mom has possibly not stopped crying tears of joy since the announcement, and nobody is mad that the wedding is going to be in Jamaica, either.)

I'm trying to fit the odd yoga class and lake run around a bit more freelance writing and a bevy of daily phone calls and emails with the list of various people working on our house project, which grows by the day. As of now, we've involved a seamstress, heating and cooling professionals, a dry basement company, a landscaper, an electrician, a painter, and a woman in NY state who makes slipcovers for the Pottery Barn rocker in addition to our general contractor and much help from Connie in the design department. I am looking forward to the final product, though I have no idea when anything about it will be final. In the meantime, I have started re-reading To Kill a Mockingbird. I haven't read it since my freshman year of high school. It calms me.

On the first night, we stood in line for our rental car under the Florida stars and watched the palm trees wave around in the breeze. It had snowed that morning here at home and we were just so happy to be someplace warm. Jason struggled with the carseat and finally had to put the top up on the Mustang convertible we thought would be fun for the girls to ride in for four days.

"It's like a convertible!" Jemma said. She had recently risen from her position lying prone across my carry-on with her socks and shoes scattered about the airport floor.

"It IS a convertible," said Annie. We got in and shot down the highway to our hotel, waited around to check in, waited for someone to come bring linens for the pullout couch where the girls would sleep, waited for sleep to come in spite of the kicking and general malaise that comes with sharing a bed in an unfamiliar place. We slept fitfully, wanting to see where we were and what we could do.

On the first morning, we woke up bright and early and walked on the beach while our shadows were still long. We saw two dolphins very close to shore and collected a bag full of shells. (It is easier to love your children when they are running wild on a beach on the Gulf of Mexico than it is at 3:30 a.m. when you have to go in and settle their sleep-fighting.) Then we went back to the pool and swam until lunch. There was a water slide and music and, really, it was all we wanted.

We ate lunch with Jason's parents at their condo and spent the rest of the day with them, swimming more and wandering around downtown Naples, getting frozen yogurt and happy hour drinks on a deck overlooking the water. We tucked sleepy girls in their bed after dinner, and there was no fighting that night, just the hard sleep of children who have been mostly underwater and in the sunshine.

The second day we mixed things up: beach all morning, lunch at our pool, afternoon hopping from the hot tub to the water slide and back to the pool. I went running along the path to the beach before the sun was hot. The girls found a tiny coconut that sank and spent hours diving for it. Jemma dove down to 8 1/2 feet one time and came triumphantly back to the surface, her pink goggles fogged, the coconut in her hand. They had to be literally dragged from the pool every hour or two and forced to drink water and reapply sunscreen. Jason and I lounged by the side in chairs, reading The Sunday New York Times Magazine and Anne Lamott, sipping orange mojitos and water with lemon, eating Chex Mix and almonds, looking around and smiling, cannonballing in from time to time. At 2:30, Jemma asked to go take a nap, so I took her back and we both slept for an hour and a half. We went out to dinner in Old Naples and the girls charmed the acoustic guitar player by requesting Bob Marley and James Taylor. We got hazelnut and chocolate gelato, then watched the sun set from the fishing pier and played frisbee in the leftover light.

The third day Jason and I swam laps in the morning and then, predictably, alternated between the beach and the pool for the rest of the day. He and the girls hiked down to the inlet to watch an osprey catch fish and to hunt for tiny mangrove crabs. I built an elaborate sand castle and river system with them when they returned. We swam in salt water and chlorine and applied sunscreen every hour. Jemma's under eyes and Annie's cheeks still got pink. We went back to our room for lunch and ate leftovers while the girls did cartwheels and played statues in the grass. Late afternoon, we met Jason's parents and their friends for cocktails before leaving the girls with them and eating homemade pasta and clams on our own on 5th St. We went in the hot tub before bed.

The fourth day we went running on the beach and drank coffee by the pool before stuffing all the things into suitcases and wishing we could stay one more day. We swam for one last afternoon at the condo and biked around town while the girls had their toenails painted by Aunt Bonnie. We took one last ride in the convertible back to the airport, and Annie cried the whole way. The girls fell asleep on the plane, and then Jemma took her turn crying (and also refusing to walk) when we landed back at home close to 11:00 p.m., where it was colder and darker than we were used to.

The fifth day we were a little disoriented, a little sun kissed, a lot grateful for what I'd call our best, easiest, most successful family vacation yet.

Good Things, October 2011

Taking in ArtPrize on a sunny Saturday;

See our reflections in the glass?

HeMan, Master of the Universe!

 weekend away on Mackinac;

tennis girls;

riding a pony at the preschool fun night;

a Brownie eating her candy after the homecoming parade;

one last day at the beach;

playing with Google Earth while waiting for lunch at Crane's;

a leaf pile;

drawing while waiting for Annie's piano lesson to end;

cozy Thursday night dinner at Big Bob's;

an hour of gleeful jumping on an inflatable pillow at Robinette's with MC;

being silly with rain gear;

bundled up for a home football game;

petting and feeding the baby goats at an apple orchard;

hiking the Saugatuck dunes before dinner at our favorite restaurant on a cloudy Sunday;

Jemma, aka "a magical Pegasus unicorn."