summer sunset

Kids are back in school. Pumpkin-flavored coffees pour forth from the coffee shops. Halloween candy and costumes line the shelves at the stores.

It seems fall has arrived full force despite the calendar still showing summer on the schedule.

As September 21 — the official final day of summer despite what the retailers profess — creeps closer, I'm mulling over the summer sorts of stuff I meant to do and didn't. A few stand out that I still want to do, still hope to do, before I can no longer deny seasons have certainly changed and summer's fully gone.

Six summery somethings still on my want-to-do list:

ONE
Camp at least one more time with my husband. In hopes of counteracting the crappy camping trip we endured (for the most part) for our 35th anniversary.

TWO
Host a backyard barbecue. For several summers running, Jim and I had patio parties scheduled throughout the summer. Sometimes on back to back weekends, one time a few summers ago on back-to-back days of one particular weekend. Last summer threw a wrench in BBQs — and everything else in our world — and I intended to get back on track with at least one or two this summer. I need to just do it.

THREE
Game night under the stars. Same goes for a game night with friends. Fun, frivolity, and more than a few libations were a fairly regular occurance in summers past yet the only game-playing Jim and I have done this summer has been a (kind of) regular two-out-of-three challenge of backgammon, Karma (card game), or Flash (dice game) between just the two of us. Fun for two... but no libations... or friends... whom we miss... and need to get together with soon. Before summer ends.

FOUR
A road trip to South Dakota. We haven't visited Jim's family in Hot Springs since his mom's memorial service last September. And we want to. Need to.

FIVE
Make homemade ice cream with my grandsons. Actually, I would like to make homemade ice cream with anyone before summer's gone. I haven't whipped up the creamy goodness even once this summer. This year so far, in fact. I suppose there's no excuse to not get the ol' Cuisinart Ice Cream Maker making what it's meant to without my grandsons. But, as we all know, everything's better with the grands.But they're so far away. And not visiting before summer's gone. Perhaps not even before 2017 is gone.

SIX
Swim in a lake... with my grandsons. Now, if you have read Grandma's Briefs very long, you may know I'm not a swimmer. To any degree. But visiting a lake and watching my grandsons swim in it doesn't require me to swim (because other — swimming — adults would be along, no doubt, for safety's sake).

There was a very brief moment a month or so ago when there was the most minor of mentions that my daughter and my grandsons might possibly make a quick trip to our house before school started. It was, definitely, just a mention, a sort of thinking out loud by my daughter, so I didn't get my hopes up. I did, though, start compiling a mental list of things to do if my beloveds did happen to spend a summer weekend or more with us.

One thing on my list was to take the boys to our local lake — a small body of water midwesterners would likely call a pond — for a picnic and some splishing, splashing, perhaps sand castle building along the shore. Brayden, Camden, and Declan have a pool in their backyard, and the two older boys experienced the ocean on a California beach before Declan was born. But I'm pretty positive none of them have had the opportunity to swim in a lake yet. I was hoping to introduce them to that.

Alas, school bells have rung, no trip to Colorado commenced. So this want surely won't happen this summer. That doesn't mean I can't still want it to, though.

Will any of my above wants be realized before fall is in full swing? Maybe. It's all up to me, I know.

Yet considering my lack of initiative on such so far, I may simply spend the waning days of summer sitting on the deck in my Adirondack chair, a book in one hand and a root beer float in the other. It's one summery something I have enjoyed this summer — more often this time around than any summer passed.

One out of seven surely ain't so bad.

But I refuse to settle for such! Time to get off the computer and get planning, time to make at least one or two more of my summery wants come true. Twenty-nine days left to do so and counting.

Today's question:

What summery somethings do you still hope to do in the next twenty-nine days?