A Note by Samantha Knies Gray
The beginning of August brought us Strassenfest week in Jasper! 🇩🇪
This particular week in August is always bittersweet for me — the end of my favorite month (July!), the excitement of the fest right outside our studio doors (LOVE!), my kids getting ready to go back to school, and the promise of more warm summer days.
While I definitely (literally) ate up the excitement of the fest, that week felt especially bittersweet.
As Julia and I strolled through the fest on opening night, we ran into a yogi-friend who asked how the little GrayGirls are and if they were ready to head back to school. I told her they were not … and this year I was not! We stood chatting a bit, and I realized that I had only one more slow summer morning with them this summer break, and then they’re back at it and our mornings will be chaotic and our evenings filled with homework and after-school-exhaustion meltdowns and extra activities and so on.
My slow intentional summer with my sweet babes has officially come to a screeching halt. I am in mourning for the death of all the things we’ve been able to do this summer AND the things we never got around to doing. I had good intentions to do all the things with them this summer — and to be honest, looking back … well, some of them just probably were never in the cards for us.
I had imagined for us early morning field hikes with the dogs to the little waterfall back in the forest creek, visits to the movie theatre and trips to the bowling alley, day road trips to fun local-ish spots, loads of swimming in our backyard pool, and a perfectly spotless home.
What I failed to remember when setting my good intentions: Isla is the only early morning person in our little GrayGirl trio, the back field to get to the waterfall was planted in hay, the movies and bowling are winter activities for us because we hate being inside during the warm months, day trips require advanced planning — especially when you have pets, I don’t actually enjoy pool lounging, and a perfectly spotless home is an impossible possibility when you have kids, indoor pets, and live on a farm.
We still had the best summer ever together and while I’m sad to see it go, I’ll focus on the many wonderful things we did get to do — and it was a whole heck of a lot more than we’ve ever been able to do any other summer! I’ll also be a little more realistic about the intentions I set for us in the future — maybe building up to some those big things — like day trips and early morning hikes and a spotless home— with smaller, baby steps.
As we enter into this new season of school — and continue through August — take a pause and revisit all the things that happened over the summer AND the things that didn’t happen that you were hoping for. Celebrate the wonderful things that did happen and don’t beat yourself up over the things that got left behind — you can always revisit the building blocks and set smaller intentions to get you to that good intention.