Review your summer

What would you like to repeat next year?

This essay is running at the start of Labor Day weekend. This is often viewed as the end of the summer season, even if the equinox is still a few weeks off. Most kids are back in school, the weather and light are starting to shift.

Hopefully it was a great summer, but regardless, in another nine months it will be summer again. So, in the eternal project of life improvement, I think it’s worth reviewing the summer to see what worked and what didn’t. What were the highlights? What would you repeat? What would you do differently?

Since most of my kids attended some sort of camp this summer, one obvious question I asked was which they liked and which weren’t their favorite.

My 5-year-old reported really liked an outdoorsy day camp he went to for a week, so I know to book for multiple weeks next year. My 10-year-old liked his sleep-away camp and is pondering going for a little longer next year. Given that his other favorite camp involved playing Minecraft all day, we will perhaps discuss the right balance between these! My daughter really enjoyed a theater camp, but she is aging out of this — so perhaps she could go back as a CIT next year. I think that would be wise as she also really enjoyed volunteering as a leader for our church’s Vacation Bible Camp.

I think my 18-year-old mostly enjoyed traveling in France in June. The one caveat on this is that there weren’t many young people on this church choir tour, and he really enjoyed hanging out with the few young people who were there. But he is scheduled to do a May-June stint overseas, likely in Europe, with his honors college crew this next summer. So I’m pretty sure that will be a win for him.

The 15-year-old took two online summer school classes. We were worried this would be a ton of work but he managed to pace himself through both. So perhaps next summer he might look for a job to fill a little more of his time (he will be able to drive himself, so that will work better with the family schedule than if he couldn’t drive himself).

I enjoyed having two very different sorts of vacations. There was the France trip — which involved moving from place to place frequently, and all the intensity of international travel. Then there were my two weeks at the beach. This was an easy trip and I enjoyed getting to do all the usual beach things, though I think my kids were getting a little tired of beachy stuff. So maybe we only do one week next year. We shall see.

One low moment was a trip to a local peach festival that could, theoretically, have been a lot of fun. But the lines were too long, it was hot, and no one was in a good mood. I try to plan family adventures but sometimes maybe just I can have my adventures. I did enjoy a lot of solo bike rides this summer.

How about you? What was good for you? What will you plan to do next year? I’ve already had to figure out some dates for next summer and camps will start booking soon — life sometimes seems like we’re always just planning the next thing! But plans tend to make good things happen, so it’s worth spending some time thinking about all this.