Summer vacation, had me a blast

My July 4^th weekend was perfect – sun, fireworks, and even the perfect amount of rain to cool down the heat of the day. 

I really do love summer.

My mom was a teacher, so she had summers off. So, we would spend a lot of time together during the summer months. There was always something to do, and she was a great partner in crime.

Growing up, we always had a big garden, and Mom spent a lot of time canning – you know, preserving foods by putting it in sealed cans. I am not sure that she loved to can, or if it was that we were on a fixed income and it was the only way we got through the winter months. Regardless, it was fun.

She would can everything from vegetables to sauces, but my favorite of all were the jellies and jams. Why? Well, there is something so fun about picking the fruit for the jams!

I remember when I was little we would go strawberry or raspberry picking. It always ended up with me bleeding because I refused to wear long pants and would get beat up by the briers. My mom would create competitive games for me to see who could fill up the containers faster, which often led to green berries being picked just to get the numbers. There was no quality control until later, and she never specified they couldn’t be green!

These times have always been times that I cherish.

We always took a two-week vacation the first two weeks in August, when my Dad finished teaching summer school. We would go camping in Maine and stop to see family along the way.

My favorite part of the trip was visiting with my father’s aunt in Massachusetts. We would eat seafood and visit cousins (and there were a lot of them!). As an only child myself, watching the brother/sister dynamics between my dad and his sister was always fascinating.

Camping in a tent, on the other hand, was a love-hate kind of thing. We loved it because it was the only way we could afford the vacation. However, there was always a twist.

You can’t predict or control the weather, so that always created a tremendous challenge. I remember being stuck in torrential rainstorms one year for almost all of the two weeks. My father told me if I cried to go home my mother would give in.

There was also the dreaded walk to go to the bathroom in the middle of the pitch black night to the one-stall bathroom. It always seemed like a million miles away. 

The priceless part, and the most meaningful part of the trip, was the opportunity to spend time in a beautiful part of the country with two people who I still adore to this day. We had fun, regardless of the weather or how long the walk to the bathroom was.

Playing Memory and Clue to pass the time. Finding shells and picking mussels for dinner. All of these warm memories make it difficult to resist jumping in when I see the kids playing Memory in the gym today.

So, what is your favorite memory of the summer vacations you took as a kid?