My social media feed is full of graduation pictures and celebrations and stressed parents dealing with the last month of school, working with all the scheduling conflicts, and trying to get it all done. Let’s not forget the panic for the last minute projects that need to be finished and handed in. For me, those days are over. For me, it’s watching my baby bird learning what all she can do with her wings and how high she can soar or how close she comes to not getting enough air. And learning who I am again as an individual.
Visit Idaho has an advertising campaign called 18 summers. The premise is that we basically get 18 summers with our children and then we let them learn to go out on their own. Until I caught on to that premise for the campaign it didn’t sink in. Now I look back on those 18 summers wistfully wishing for more in one moment, and in the next moment planning a mini trip for the Hubs and I.
When you think in terms of 18 summers suddenly time is moving way way too fast, yet there are ways to look back on 18 meaningful summers of memories, and it doesn’t require planning lavish trips every year and it doesn’t have to happen in the summer.
Take some time and write down some of the things your family truly enjoys doing.
Sometimes that may coincide with work or sports. For my family, we spent a lot of time in the summer at the farm in Teton Valley fixing fence or moving cows or just riding horses and checking the cows in the forest. We parked campers and had a lot of fun with family. We did a lot of fishing and riding 4 wheelers, picking huckleberries, nothing expensive but full of memories. When our daughter joined the high school mountain bike team the camper hit the road for the bike races or camping with bike club. We didn’t have as much time for just relaxing, yet those are some of my favorite memories as a family.
Sometimes it’s simply things like bowling with extended family, or floating warm river, BBQ’s, trips to the museum or zoo. We did take a once in a lifetime trip to Alaska and did all the big things we wanted to do: fishing, glacier cruise and the jeep ride in Denali and seeing the sled dogs. Visiting old Russian Orthodox churches with the onion skin style domes and museums, then took a lot of the photographs and made a book.
So we have done the big and little things, we have soaked in hot springs in Idaho, biked some great trails and roasted marshmallows over many fires. Visited Yellowstone many many times and dug fossils at Thanksgiving point.
The point isn’t necessarily what you do or where but that you as parents are there physically in those moments. Seeing your child catch their first fish, or ride their bike or digging for fossils. We have to stop and take the time to really be in the present and participating in all the things, from the little to the small, because 18 summers go by very fast and memories are so much better than regrets.
