We came home from vacation yesterday. Aaron and I spent yesterday doing all the just got home after a few weeks away camping type things. Seven loads of laundry, mowing the lawn, unloading the leftover odds and ends of groceries. Cleaning all the beach sand and keep kids occupied while driving obscene amounts of both distance and time items out of the van. Those types of things. Life type of things. Today we were right back at it. All the kids had VBS this morning (I'm volunteering) and Liam went back to soccer skills training. Aaron was at the office for 13 hours trying to get a little caught up there.

I picked our raspberries and our beans - the tomatoes are starting to ripen and the peas were a bust this year. We sorted and distributed 500 or so pounds of fruit from my parents no spray orchard to my food coop friends out of our kitchen. We hit up the library to return read books and pick up some new items on hold. We needed milk and a few other basics so we went to the grocery store too.

Moving from camping holidays where the pace is so slow and steady (even monotonous at times) to the first few filled overflowing days at home leaves me off kilter. I'm happy to be home: to sleep on sheets with no sand in them and to have a longer shower where I'm not wearing flip flops because the campsite shower floors are always dirty. But I'm also dizzy at all there is to do.

Those first few days I'm always wondering what to do next until the catch up is done and things are back to our normal home rhythms. Where we are moving from the wonder and beauty of being all together outdoors by the sea to the wonder that is our everyday life.

This weeks chalkboard wisdom. Art by Haven.

It's late and I have at least two dozen other things I could be doing right now (including sleeping). But tonight while canning peaches, saving up some of summer's glory it felt chilly on the deck. And too many leaves crunched under mine and Haven's feet while we picked in the garden so I must write down a bit more of summer. The seasons are turning.

I don't want to forget to mention that my baby turned three, that I now have the most precious goddaughter to my two godsons. That watching my older two play soccer brings me much happiness. I don't want to forget swimming with friends and park days with deep conversation and reading books with my toes in mountain streams.

I don't want to forget the goodness of the hard work of summer or the way some days are just hot and sweaty and grumpy but they can still end with all of us piled into one bed with Barbara Reid's book of Mother's Goose and it's one more summer where no one is too old for it just yet.

I don't want to forget Raine's first triathlon or my own or how Haven had her first ever all clear dentist appointment. And how we went on a date for a cupcake in the city. Or how the girls tried tubing for the first time and how all my babies hair smells after long days in the sun. How Liam turned into a vicarious reader over night and devoured chapter book after chapter book.

I don't want to forget the family photos in the rain (not the best year but I still look at them with love) and my watching the way my kids are growing into such good friends and how they can play imagination games for hours. There was dinning under the big tree on our garden harvest everyone helped grow with some black keys on the side. We stayed up to watch the stars.

I don't want to forget the tenderness of celebrating fifteen years.

I don't want to forget that we loved and we laughed. How I rediscovered something about being beloved.