Summer Utopia

I don't know if utopic is a word, but if you posed the question, "How was your summer?" some version of utopia would be part of my answer. Since Labor Day is the unofficial End of Summer, and the days are getting shorter and the nights are getting colder, I am trying somehow to memorialize this summer. Maybe in doing so I feel like I don't have to bid it farewell quite yet.

Call me crazy, but I swear it somehow all started with these silly bummer lambs that we got on Mother's Day weekend. I was mixing formula and washing bottles like crazy. The kids and I would throw jackets and rubber boots on over our pajamas and head out to go feed our baby lambs. Soon school ended and summer was officially here.

If we were wealthy, like really in-another-life kind of wealthy, we would spend our summers on a beach in Spain. But the most perfect thing about this summer was that it was all right here. All normal and real and day-to-day. We introduced our baby chicks to the big chicken coop and they started laying eggs. We weaned our lambs from bottles and started staking them out to eat grass. We tilled the dirt, selected the seeds, and planted a garden. We watched the plants sprout, and the weeds sprout, and the bugs come. We tended and took care of it.

We went camping and horseback riding. We cheered Jeff on as he competed with the Riding Club. We went swimming. We moved sprinklers and watched the corn grow. We volunteered, painted nails, and visited at the local care center. We went to the Ute Stampede. We participated in the County Fair. We went to Disneyland!

I began each morning began with an early run and a long prayer. I ended each day tucking my children into bed. I enjoyed each Wednesday evening teaching Institute. I competed in my first biathlon! I made fantastic salsa from my garden, and spent Labor Day bottling tomatoes. (If you've never gone to the work of bottling something you worked to produce, you should really do it. It's a huge shot of make-you-feel-awesome.)

A few weeks ago Daisy and Jeff and I all went back to school. I was on my morning run with my dog when a farm truck was blinded by the rising sun and hit and killed her. The bugs have finally gotten to my pumpkins so the plants are dying and they are ripening too quickly. Institute is over. My Utopia is coming to an end.

As Fall fast approaches, invited or not, I know there is much to look forward to. I will enjoy the change in seasons, the holiday celebrations, the winter magic, and the spring thaw. But, while I will enjoy the journey, really I will just be waiting for our next Utopian summer.