It’s that time of year again…where kids are getting ready to head back to school.  Well, maybe they aren’t getting ready, but it’s going to happen.

Where does the time go?  It seems like summer just started, and it’s already almost over.  The stores have had back to school items out since the 4th of July, and I have already seen some Halloween decorations going up.  What???

I remember when I was younger, and time seemed to stand still.  I fondly remember summer vacations as a child.  We would spend hours upon hours building daisy chain crowns for our heads, running through sprinklers, or riding bikes down to the local dime store for penny candy.We reveled in our days, our childhood, our freedom from worry.  For us, days seemed to last longer.  Maybe it’s the business of adulthood that speeds the time up.  We seem to forget to enjoy each day that we are given.  We are always planning ahead, planning next week, next month, next year.  We plan for days that we are not guaranteed to get.  We are each given a certain number of days on this earth; a certain number of sunrises and sunsets.   We should be enjoying them, don’t you agree?

Stop and smell the flowers with your toddler instead of hurrying them along to your next errand.  Take time with your teens to experience the joys of burgeoning adulthood.  Take time with your parents and grandparents and really talk to them.  And LISTEN- to their stories, their lives, their memories.  Enjoy watching a sunrise and/or sunset with your loved ones every now and then. And make sure to budget for family vacations. They don’t have to be expensive to build the memories that will last a lifetime.

And take time to run through the sprinklers…

(This post written by Heather of The Homesteading Hippy)