I love summer evenings.  Most of our evenings this season are wide open.  We have no set obligations.  Cory’s work schedule has left him with almost all day shifts (yay!), so we have long stretches of family time.  It’s been marvelous.  During the school year, we have evening activities on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and Cory is usually prepping for classes or grading papers every night of the week.  His summer job is blessedly without prep, so summer feels like a dream.

A long-anticipated event occurred earlier this month.  We put up a hammock!  Cory has been wanting a hammock for our entire marriage, and we finally have a great spot for one.  We also have a nice, new fire pit–made with stones we’ve discovered around our property, and the kids have loved having “campfires” from time to time.  Of course, we’ve made s’mores.  I’ve never been a big fan (looks like a bellyache on a stick to me), but the kids adore making them.  I have to say yes once in awhile, right?

We still have lots of work to do in our yard, but it is feeling more and more like a beautiful extension of our home.  My childhood memories are loaded with images of summer nights–going for walks at dusk, listening to John Prine and Rod Stewart in the picnic pavilion that my dad built, catching lightening bugs and trying to feed them grass, going up and down on the swings while the sun set pink over the river.

I think about the process of making memories, and I wonder which images will stick in my children’s minds 20, 30, 40 years from now.  Will pictures of these nights in the yard come to mind when they swing in the twilight with their own children?  I hope so.