I got up early this morning, my alarm dragging me out of a dream that I was doing laundry. Dreams like that just shouldn’t be allowed! I spent a happy hour or so answering emails in ‘work’ mode, writing out invoices and putting them into envelopes, writing to people and saying “Pleeeease get back to me on this, see previous email, must go to print next week, did you want that as a full-page sir?” I got most of the concentrating and serious stuff DONE before the rest of the family had cracked an eyelid.

Now the boys are up, playing chess. They have replaced all but the King and Queen with little plastic soldiers: Grey ‘Modern’ ones with guns, and green ‘Medieval’ ones with axes and bows and arrows. They keep forgetting which is which: “No, the snipers on one knee are Knights, not Rooks!”

“You are so cheating.”

“You are so losing.”

I’ve been thinking how BUSY we are sometimes, as parents and as families. And then at other times, life is so slow, so routine! It’s been so busy the last few weeks I thought “Oh no, we haven’t done any of our lazy summery stuff!” Building puzzles, painting, playing board games, lying around saying “Weee’rrre boooored” till suddenly you have a great idea? Nope, nope. It’s been action stations here.

And our weekend will be the hyped-up icing on the cake. We’re going to have summer FUN FUN FUN before coming back home to a slightly emptier house, slightly rainier weather, and a slightly more boring life… till next time.

It’s good to remember, when the chores and assignments are stacking up, that soon life will cycle down again and we’ll be all caught up and wishing something exciting would happen!

by Nan Sheppard

Photo graciously provided by the Author, through a Creative Commons license, some rights reserved