Yep, it’s over. Summer in this household has come to an official close with T starting school yesterday (more on that later, but woo hoo so far!).

With that, I’d like to summarize the two main things that I learned on my first summer vacation as a mom…

1. Things don’t always go as planned; just roll with it, mama. Wednesday I mentioned our end-of-summer play date at the splash pad as the way we planned to wind down our very fun yet very busy summer. I managed to wrestle about 50 moms and kiddos out at 10am to partake in what should have been a great morning had by all, but what we didn’t plan on was a burst pipe. So about 30 minutes into the scheduled play date with no water flowing, parks and rec personnel told us that the party was over… at the splash pad anyway. While some folks left to go do whatever (hey, when you’re a mom and you get a surprise open window of time, you can manage to fill it with something else, always), some of us stayed at the nearby playground and watched as the kids were seriously none the wiser to this glitch in the day. Yes, I admit, I had a tough time at first rolling with it since it was my event and I had no way to make it up to those who came out and reschedule this particular play date this summer (with kids starting school, we’d planned this one weeks ahead of time, that and the place closes once summer ends). But as I stood and watched T run happily through the playground in his dry swimsuit with his pals, I couldn’t help but turn the frown upside down. Having great friends chat me up also helped me adjust my attitude immensely. After all, as a few friends said in jest, I didn’t take a hammer to the pipes myself, did I (because then for sure they’d have blamed me)? PS – after the playground, we hit the beach for two hours, wound up at a friend’s house for the late afternoon for another couple of hours, and then a group of us took our kiddos out for an early dinner. It was a very long but fun-filled day, and I can’t help but wonder if the day hadn’t had the unfortunate start it did, would it have been as great? I think what we had here was a true lemonade-from-lemons day (including some limoncello, literally). I am just glad I was wise enough in the end to recognize and appreciate the day and all it offered us, which was one heckuva way to wrap up our summer vacation.

2. Under-schedule, over-deliver. As I mentioned previously, the first month of our summer vacation I was busy keeping us busy. Very, very busy. However, I decided to slow it down a tad in August with the pre-planned activities. At first it was an adjustment for both T and myself since we were both so used to being out of the house for a solid 5-6 hours of the day, and now here we were taking some more hang-at-home days, or we were chunking our outings into smaller bits and pieces. We definitely mixed it up, which means, we were a little out of sync and off our routine. But after a couple of weeks of slowing down, I found we were in the end much, much happier. More laughing, more go-with-the-flow, and better rested. Yes, this was also when T decided to give up the daily nap, yet on days where he still would nap, wowzers, we’re talking 2-3 hours nap-a-thons. We played when we could and rested even more when we needed it. Welcome back, balance!

Overall, it was a fun-filled and busy-in-a-good-way summer for T and me (and C, too, when he could come on our adventures). Sure, I wish we’d made more time to do a few other things and see more people than we did, but it’s good we left a few things on the table to do next summer, or even during a few upcoming weekends this fall. After all, T is just still in school two days/ week, and the weather is still beautiful. However, I’m not making any plans just yet.