Looking Back on Summer 2012

Funny thing really, it's sort of like summer vanished over night. I'm not sure exactly what the impetus was for the seasonal switch in my mind - maybe school starting, maybe the move to our new home, maybe Labor Day, or maybe just the new rhythm of drop-offs and pick-ups and overall hustle and bustle.  Whatever it was, those photos up there in the Summer Blog Header seem like a hazy memory.  The swimsuits are outgrown. And that yard in the pictures belong to someone else now. I don't have a clue where we'd even find our sprinkler, should we decide we needed it. (Ack, did we even pack the sprinkler?!)  And, well, summer just feels gone.

I can tell you all one thing - a whole lot changed in the summer of 2012. And while all those things were changing, only a teeny tiny sliver of life showed up on the blog. Some of it was a little too private to go global, but the vast majority of summer details were just lost in the shuffle of it all. But  I learned that I really do miss blogging when I don't have time for it. Not only do I start to feel this weird brand of guilt when I fail to document something, but I also just sort of need to write to process things sometimes.  So, maybe there's a longer, more detailed and more pensive post in me somewhere about the summer now-gone but for now I'm just going to go full steam ahead into catch-up mode.  (Here we go with catching up again.)   

So, on to some highlights from the summer of 2012.  The summer when we sold the home we thought we'd be in for a long time and bought the one we thought was way out of our reach. The summer that any remaining sliver of little Josie gave way to five-year-old, kindergarten Josie and all the independence/interdependence struggles that come along with it. The summer that Beatrice bloomed into full toddler-hood, complete with all the adorable chaos that she creates.  The summer that both of our careers took on new demands. And the summer that we talked a whole lot about re-prioritizing and re-inventing what life looks like for the Four Schneiders.

I'm hoping to spend much of this week posting summer highlights, so buckle up!