Great, grateful gulps

When your family lives whole coasts apart, you take your time with them in great, grateful gulps.

I’m still chugging.

I’ve enjoyed the crowded tables full of chatty people and the quiet mornings with a baby so amiable she spends her days in a swaddle of shear delight.

For the record, our little New Jersey bagel has loved her first tiny taste of Culver’s, her first visit to Cozzy Corner, the whole atmosphere of Primal Eats, and the onesie selection at Blue Moon Emporium.

She has been sleeping through the campfires and the river floats, but I love those enough for both of us.

Maybe it’s because this family time we are enjoying is seasonally finite, or because the older we get the more we realize that life itself is finite, but I have been grateful for every peaceful, frantic, did I leave the chicken in the trunk?, strip the bed, wash the sheets, kiss the baby, set the table, clear the table, kiss the baby, scoop the ice cream, scramble the eggs, kiss the baby, swat the mosquito, find the sunscreen, kiss the baby, build the Lego, take the picture, feed the gecko, kiss the baby, taste the burnt marshmallow, listen to the story, play the game, grill the chicken, pick the tomatoes, kiss the baby moment.

I hope your summer is full of the kind of happy chaos that reminds us all how lucky we are to live in a world full of sunshine, fresh air and family.

I also hope that, if you buy a large pack of chicken breasts on one of your many trips to the grocery store on these gorgeous, hot summer days, that you don’t overlook it when you unload your car.