Summer… wonderful season for children, teenagers and the rest of the world!

Summer… the time that kids and teachers have vacations and families plan different ways to visit friends and relatives or get away somehow.

The summers are getting more and more difficult every year for a lot people. The economy doesn’t help. People have to work extra just to take their children to the beach or to the movies which is actually very expensive these days! I wish we didn’t have to pay $5.00 for a hot dog at the beach or $50.00 dollars to see a movie with 3 people!

I have been talking to a lot people and times are changing in so many different ways. I remember summers for me when I was 8 years old. They were the best times of my life!! My parents never had to worry about putting us in summer camps, ballet, gym classes, or pottery school, etc. Our days were playing outside until it was dark and my mother would call us for dinner. Our parents worked full time jobs and somehow they managed to take care of 5 children (us). We didn’t have nannies and the neighbors kept us in their homes or if we were big enough they kept an eye on us. The weekends were great waiting for my Dad to take us to the beach and I still remember spending entire days at the beach. No worries about skin cancer or putting extra creams on us even though the sun was brutal! I don’t remember so many kinds of lotion to avoid sunburn at that time. They did make sure we drank a lot juices and coke. Forget about water or mixing juice with water? We had real sodas with lots of sugar and ate ice cream like there was not tomorrow.

Later, when I was a teenager, life was different of course, but just as amazing. The last day of school was the best day of the whole year besides Christmas, of course! Those days still make me smile and bring me memories that make my whole life special. We grew up in a nice neighborhood and our summer routine was sleep all morning, get up fix our room, run to the beach all day long , come for dinner and leave your home to see your friends again!

Today everything seems so different and it makes me think how lucky I was to grow up in a normal, God oriented environment. My parents realized that we spent 9 months of the year going to school, getting up early and going to bed early and were tired. We needed to sleep and rest our young bodies at least 3 months of the year. Times have changed and so have we but it’s nice to reminisce about those times. I’m sure many of you remember how simple life used to be and how complicated it is right now. We now have computers and cell phones to communicate with each other. I used to scream from my window. Now it’s so hard to talk with the kids. They are too busy texting, sending emails or hard wired to their iPods and there is a television in every room of the house. The communication is very different and we quickly forget how nice it was to just sit at the table, have dinner together and talk about our day.

I wish the best summer ever to all of our friends out there and may this be as wonderful a time of year for you as it always was for me.