The Pandemic Taught Me How to Enjoy Summer

Two summers ago was the first summer I spent home with my 3 kids after quitting my 9–5 and moving halfway across the country.

As you can probably imagine, it wasn’t that great. Sure, there were fun times, but it was also a LOT of work. I have three girls. They were 1 and a half, 4 and 6 at the time.

My summer went like this:

In the morning I would pack up all the stuff we needed for whatever we were doing that day. We would try to leave the house in time to get everywhere as soon as it opened because we had to leave by like 11:00 if I wanted my littlest to actually nap at home.

So it was just a bunch of moving stuff and people around, a small amount of fun, and then we’d do it all over again to get home. It included a lot of effort from me to carry things, apply sunscreen, buckle and unbuckle car seats.

Needless to say, it was fairly stressful.

I thought we had to DO a bunch of things for the summer to be fun.

Last summer, the pandemic meant that our options were much fewer. I had intended to make it the summer of spending time with friends, but that wasn’t an option either.

One day my mom called and asked if we wanted to swim at her house. She lives on a lake nearby. I had a client call that afternoon and it was my night to do baths and put the kids to bed. It wasn’t going to be enough time for it to be fun. It was going to feel rushed and stressful.

I almost said no.

Instead, I asked myself how we could do it in a way that was fun.

If my husband made dinner and we bathed the girls at my moms, we gained 2 hours.

They both said yes when I asked, so I said yes to swimming.

It became my favorite day of the week. I would finish my work, we’d get our bathing suits on and hop in the car. I didn’t have to worry about towels, life jackets, snacks. My mom had all that stuff. The kids were excited to go, so getting them in the car was easy.

We would sit on the small beach and relax. I would take the big girls out to the swim dock and jump in with them. It was the epitome of summer and it was FUN.

When it wasn’t Tuesday, we would mostly stay at home and play in the yard. I had squirt gun fights with my kids. I would read a book while they were playing in the water. We would take walks around the neighborhood or go on bike rides.

I got the best of all those things I missed out on when I was in the office without all the stress.