Closing In

The warm weather and the shorts that JJ insists on wearing only remind me that summer is closing in on us. What are we to do for this new season? Audrey only has six short weeks of school left, and we will soon have a new little baby in our house. Last summer we spent almost everyday in the pool, it was fabulous, the kids were like fish and Audrey was the tannest kid on the block (she still has the tan, what luck). This year we don't have a pool in front of our house, so what will we do with the weather closing in on us and the time to get out of the house on a daily basis quickly coming upon us? I need a strategy. I need to know what I am getting myself into. Four kids and lots of empty minutes.
As a kid summer was all important. When I was little my sisters and I spent summer at Daycare. Having Bike Day, and going on random field trips, cardboard sliding down the hill behind Cabrillo, talent shows, playing office, and school, and house, going to the top deck and playing on the grass or up in the trees or down in the crevices of the cracking mountain. We went on sleepovers and spent time with our grandparents or visited family out of town. We spent days in the backyard building forts and playing in the creek. I am sure that I was bored out of my mind. And I am sure that at the end of each day I would say to my mother much the same as Audrey says to me, "I am so bored, what are we going to do now?" To which my mother probably replied, "What do you mean you are bored?"
I just read this article in the readers digest about growing old. It was an excerpt from a book "Forward From Here" by Reeve Lindbergh. The excerpt As Time Goes By from the May issue is very inspirational, although I am not sure why. She says in the article, "I may be 'grown-up' now, but I don't think I've improved as a human being since I was 12. Whatever I was then, I am now, only older." And she is right. I am that same summer kid, I just look forward to different things because summer is the same as winter to me, I don't have to wait for school to get out in order to have an opportunity to get out and do, I just am missing the desire for forts and cardboard sliding.