Summer is drawing to a close and I am trying my best to squeeze every moment I can out of it; every last drop.

Our family has had an amazing summer: road trips, family reunion in Boone, Trips to Wilmington twice, water park, movies, a few days at the Outer Banks, etc. But the best part was the lack of schedule, kind of. I realized about two weeks in to our summer break that our kids do much better with some sort of structure to their day. So we made a list of required tasks before they could have device time. It included: 2 chores from the chore list, 30 minutes of reading, help a sibling and at least 30 minutes of a personal project. That was my favorite idea. The personal project could be anything: watercolor, build with Legos, journal, craft, etc. I even made this a rule for myself.

The best part about the summer: I bought a new camera! I bought a Canon mirrorless camera. It is light weight, takes amazing pictures and can even upload the images to my phone through bluetooth. I carried it everywhere this summer. My professional camera is too big and heavy and my iPhone just doesn’t do the job for me. The picture quality is amazing and it does video!

Here’s to Summer 2019, the best one yet!