One morning, I woke up to the sound of chirping birds and the bright sun stretching it's golden rays towards our window. It was the last day of school for the children and now here they are going back again. Where did those summer months go? It seems like only yesterday we were celebrating Reuben's grade 5 graduation and making plans for summer vacation. Our summer turned out to be a lot busier than what we had planned. There were weddings, funerals, reunions, parties and our annual summer Albright Christmas tradition. Every summer my side of the family gets together and celebrates Christmas rather than doing it in December. Our family is so large and live a few miles from each other that it is easier for us to do this in the warmer months where we can fire up the BBQ, meet at a park or at each others houses. We do countless fun activities with the children and swap gifts. We always have a blast..jpg)
My mother has 19 grandchildren and she isn't even 50 yet. I have one brother and 4 sisters and between the six of us we have given all these grandchildren to our Parents. Family functions are filled with laughter and a lot of noise as all these children except one are ages 11 and under! We have come to realize that time spent together is precious and that it goes very fast. I wish we would have had more time to do what we wanted to do this summer. In August it rained nonstop for well over 17 days straight. This put a damper on any outside activities but I am thankful that I got to see a lot of my family that I haven't seen in years and happy that we were able to take the children on vacation to Nova Scotia where they had the time of their lives :)Isn't it funny how when we were children time seemed to stand still? Now, as adults we don't have enough hours in the run of the day to do all we want to do. Many times I lay my head down at night disappointed that I didn't accomplish all I wanted to however more importantly I realized I am blessed because I took the time to spend quality time with my children. We may have gone on a hike or explored nature in a local park. Or maybe we baked cookies and watched a movie together. It is those little moments where the child feels more important than housework that matter. We had a lot of projects planned for this summer and not even half of them got done and it left us wondering...where did the summer go? I know where it went...it drifted off down memory lane like all of our yesterdays!
Summer 2008 in Nova Scotia