these {my summer} moments

I've attempted a couple times to write posts about our summer.  There are such exciting stories to tell and pictures to share.  I've thought about lengthy posts with nitty gritty details of our move to a new home, our week at the beach, Lovey's wedding.  I've considered a quick "postcards" version sharing the highlights of our time in between houses when we stayed with family, or of the first days and weeks trying to establish ourselves in our new community.  I've written sentences and deleted them, I've browsed the thousand plus pictures of this summer.

But a post never quite came together.

Then I realized how hard it is to write about a season of life that has been so difficult.  So very difficult.  Despite all of the goodness, all of the excitement, all of the blessings of our summer -- it has been overwhelmingly hard.

How could I write about summer when in many ways it hasn't seemed like summer at all, certainly not any summer I have known.  Instead it has been a season all its own, delight and surprise, coupled with fatigue and unknown.  As I explained in a comment to Lady Cordelia "I say goodbye to summer, without ever really having said hello."  

And so it is that this past week has been spent saying goodbye to this not-quite-a-summer, and saying hello to new.  New season, new routines, new schools, new friends, new teachers, new bus stops, new places to keep the keys and lunchboxes, new kitchen with new cabinets, new sounds, new smells, new yard and new trees, new playground and new pool, new, new, new.

Yet.

Yet, even in my tipping toward fall, I don't want what has been experienced and learned this summer to be lost.

So I share these {my summer} moments.  Some you will surely recognize for what they are, others may only mean something to me, as it should be.  There are many photos.  Many, many.  The photographic quality of some aren't great, but I don't care, they deserve a place here.  This is my summer, my meaningful moments.  And it is in my sharing that I can embrace this season for what it has been, and say goodbye to summer with much more pleasure and gratitude.

Joining Soulemama, and many others, in this moment.