My Favorite Season

I came across this fun post I wrote at the beginning of the summer and never published.

I've always thought of fall as my favorite season. It means cool weather, perfect for jeans and a t-shirt or light jacket. It means cross country season and fall half-marathons. It is my favorite season for running and racing. After a summer that ends with 100+ degree weather on the daily, the cooler temps are a welcome relief. As a student and then as a teacher summer was my favorite season, I thought, simply because I was "off" (as a teacher I still worked a lot on classroom stuff, but didn't have typical hours at school). Now that I'm home all year round and my day-to-day doesn't change at all during the summer, I realize that summer really is my favorite season and for so many reasons other than just being "off". There is so much I love about summer. Here are my favorite things:

• Longer daylight hours which also means more time out in the sun. I never knew how big this is for me until I finally made the connection between less time in the sunlight during the winter and more down in the dumps days for me. I get a mild case of Seasonal Affective Disorder every winter which is just SAD, haha!
• Spending most of our waking hours outside. Whether it's at the splash pad or in the kiddie pool in the backyard, we find a way to be outside and stay cool.
• Popsicles, ice cream, and sno cones.
• S'mores, especially when cooked over a campfire or a fire pit outside.
  
  
• Zac Brown Band to me is just the perfect summer music and I love jamming out on Pandora while we play outside.
• The summer reading program. It always inspires me to start reading more which often time means carving out part of naptime to read and dropping some of my chores which I really should do year-round! Plus all the fun activities and events for kids that are part of the program.
• Picnics at the park or in the backyard. 
• Sweet baby legs! Warmer weather means wearing shorts which means I get to see my sweet babies' legs on a daily basis and they are oh so adorable. Elise in dresses just makes my heart smile!
• Playing in the water at splash pads and pools.
  
• All the green grass and the pretty flowers blooming, although it gets hot enough around here that if we don't get rain the grass quickly goes brown!
• Really the main thing that I love is being outside. No matter what the weather you can play outside in the summer, even if it's raining because that just means you are going to be cooler!
  
• And now I have another reason to love summer, Carter home with me all day every day!