My Magical Google Calendar

This month marks the 10 year anniversary of Notes from a Marriage Geek. I found a way to merge my love of writing with my passion creating great relationships and actually stick with it…a mini miracle.

I have never kept a diary or been a journaler. Writing Heal Your Birth Stories actually forced me to write mine. I have a stack of nearly empty blank books on my bedside table where I’ve tried…and failed to chronicle my daily experience.

Leave it to Google to whip me into shape. When I reluctantly ditched my paper calendar and signed on to Google Calendar I didn’t realize it would become my time machine.

I leave myself notes all over my calendar. Do not work the day before Thanksgiving- it makes you super stressed and resentful. Remember you wish you had started Christmas shopping earlier last year. Don’t forget that the boys are always bored on New Year’s weekend.

Every year, I leave myself a note on my February calendar to start thinking about summer. When the boys were little, it was time to start signing up for daycare and camps and now it is just a great treatment for cabin fever. At the end of the summer, I write myself a letter on how to build a (nearly) perfect summer. The measure of a perfect summer changes as my kids change. Each year is an experiment of getting the right balance of active and lazy, structured and not.

I encourage you, as we approach the last official weekend of summer take a minute and reflect.

Did you and the kids get enough sun, outside play, down time? Vitamin D levels restored for the coming darkness?

Do you feel like it went too fast or lasted too long? Too much structure or not enough? Do you wish you’d taken more time off, gotten away longer or did you forget that your kids really do better when they are at camp all week?

Do you love gardening or resent it? Did you grow too many tomatoes? How many zucchini can a family actually eat?

Ask the kids what their favorite part of the summer was. Ask them what they wish they’d done more of. (There actually are a few more lovely days ahead.)

Now… alone or as a family take a minute to acknowledge what the season gave us and create a vision for next year. How old will they be? What will they need? What things must end and what things begin?

Take a moment to look back and look forward. Honor, review, acknowledge, reflect, savor, delight in the end of this amazing summer.