Ah summer.  Wonderful, beautiful summer.  Thoughts of flowers and warm days, of vacations to the beach, to the pool, and to the amusement park all belong to the days of summer.  No more school, no more routine and most importantly no more homework! Nothing ahead but those lazy, hazy days of summer. 

Okay, so that’s just what I’d like to think of summer.  I can dream, you know.  Oh, it starts out promising enough.  The kids are out of school and are happy.  I’m off of work and happy.  Work being the school where my children attend.   Vacation – actual out of town vacation – is just a week away.  All is good in our house.

Long days stretch out before us; days that include lying at the pool, days at the water park, days sleeping in and staying up late.  There’s time for bar-b-ques and picnics.  There’s camping and shopping.  There are long, lazy walks and trips to the ballpark.  Everything is good at the beginning of summer.

Fun is to be had then when freedom is fresh and school is still a long way off. 

When I think back to those heady days (were they only a few weeks ago?) I wonder where the time went.  I remember the beginning of it; the constant planning for vacation, the packing of luggage and making arrangements for the dogs, the mail, and the paper.  Excitement was mounting.  The end of summer was too far off to worry about and besides, the good times will surely never end.  This was what we were meant to do, to stay at home, doing what we want, without the constant interruptions of work and school.

The kids were the happiest.  You could see it in the fun glazed eyes.  They stayed up late, far later than you like them too, but hey, it’s summer, you reasoned and why not.  Let them enjoy their time.  They ate when they liked, what they liked.  Discipline? What’s that?  Isn’t that something for school and winter?  Now is the time of summer and summer is to be enjoyed.

But kid’s emotions tell the story first.  Oh, it’s insidious, this summer vacation.  It takes forever to come, and then when it gets here, you get bored.  At first you don’t even notice it, this thing called boredom.  The signs are subtle and most of us are not even qualified to notice them at first.  But soon they rear their ugly head and you can’t ignore them.