“It’s just enough to steal my heart and run, and fade out with the falling sun…oh, please don’t go, let me have you just one moment more.” — Mindy Smith
Dear Summer of ’17,
I’ll just go ahead and be direct: I’m asking a lot of you. To be fair, you left my middle with an injury that has kept her sidelined for our first three weeks without school, so you kinda owe me. 
I’m not asking for perfection here, Summer. I’m just asking you to slow time a bit. You see, this is my last season before we enter a new chapter for our family: we will no longer be homeschooling, and my big and my middle are heading to public school in the fall. That means this will be the last stretch of time, for a long time, that they’re all here all day, every day. Pretty soon it’ll just be me and the little, and while that will have its own benefits, I’ll miss my big two.
So Summer, here’s the deal: This is the first year in a long time that your boundaries have truly, deeply mattered. So within our time together, I have some big requests.
I need extra lightning bugs and fireworks. I need adventures and lazy Sunday afternoons. I need that magic you provide so naturally and freely. I need the unexpected that knocks my teenager out of his stoicism for just a moment. I need New Orleans style sno-balls and playing in the warm rain. I need pool days and free days and really great sunsets. I need s’mores by the fire pit at night and belly laughs. If you could throw in some rides in the mountains with the windows down and a few drive-in movies, I’ll throw out the reading logs and chore checklists.
All of those things would be so great, Summer, but most of all…don’t let me forget.
Help me not take one day with you — with them — for granted. I know they will be wild and antsy, and I know they will argue, and I know I will need a moment once in a while, but don’t let me lose track of these days, and how few and precious they are. You are here and gone so fast, and with you, this chapter closes for us. Help me make it last; help me make it count. Help me choose my battles and make this a summer of more yes and less no. Let there be memories here among the noise and chaos and our final fling with the glorious, wild, unstructured.
