I am mesmerized with summer this year.

I forgot how much I love it.

Maybe it is being back in Florida, this is my first summer here in three years. 

I had forgotten all the luscious, tropical beauty, the scents, the flowers, the rain, the steamy hot days and the ever-so-slightly cooler nights.  June weather in Florida is like August weather in northern Ohio where I grew-up, a relentless stream of heat and humidity with scattered moments of sweet breezes and cloud-covered skies.

Maybe it is because I was back home in Ohio this year as spring was breaking and floods of warm memories came with the showers. 

Memories of long lazy days, when my biggest decision was: Do I play ball or Barbie, build a fort or read a book?

My family hosted lots of summer parties, we had a huge, wooded backyard and my parents were fond of having cookouts for my Mom’s 13 siblings and their families,  my parents’ friends and the neighbors.  While the grown-ups relaxed, my cousins, sisters, brothers and I could do pretty much whatever we wanted.  I remember unlimited supplies of little glass bottles of pop and hot dogs and marshmallows on sticks – heaven to a seven-year old.

Kid summers grew into even lazier teenage summers.  We spent a lot of our early teen years babysitting to save-up money so we could stroll around in really short, shorts or cut-offs, trying to look cool eating cotton candy and candy apples after screaming our way through rides with our friends.  Sad, but true, some years that was as good as it got, and we thought that was great! 

In our later teens, we used to sunbathe on the roof of our house – removed as much as possible from our younger siblings and the world – listening to our battery-powered radios, covered in baby oil and iodine – hard to write that without laughing and feeling the need to schedule an appointment with a dermatologist, but, hey, we were stranded in suburbia, the roof seemed exciting and all the magazines suggested the tanning benefits of that particular combination.

My teen years gave way to great adult summers.  I will never forget one particularly wonderful summer when my sons were still  pre-schoolers, my neighbor’s pool was our daytime hang-out and my nights were filled with running sales and accounting reports at a company I loved.  Really was the perfect summer – lots of easy, fun, lazy time with my sons and friend and work I enjoyed.

Whatever the reasons, this summer seems sweeter than ever, and I am going to savor every sunny, sweaty, and sticky minute of it.

Hope yours is off to a great start, that moments are being enjoyed and memories are being made.

Do you have a favorite summertime memory you would like to share?  If so, we would love to hear it.