Happy Fall Y'all!

I can’t believe it’s post-Labor Day, back in the school routine, rounding the corner to pumpkin picking. I’ve smiled to myself as I look at the ambitious ideas I’d laid out for the summer (educational activities! field trips! arts & crafts! exploring new adventures!) and can appreciate that the quality was most certainly more important than the quantity.

If you’re like me, you also love the change in seasons. Fall is my favorite – and I’m not even a pumpkin spice latte girl! But there’s something intrinsically beautiful about fall – harvest season, the golden oranges and bronze covering the hillsides, cooler temps, a respite from southern humidity (a season all its own) and the start of baseball season. It’s easy to embrace.

It’s also a time to reflect on the summer memories made – and while writing is my passion, being COO of my household hasn’t allowed quite as much time to chart these moments as I’d like, so I’m sitting down now – before the fireplace gets turned on and the Halloween costumes are picked out – to share some of my favorite scenes of this summer. You won’t be surprised that many of them come from the lake: celebrating my 5-year-old’s birthday (mermaid style, of course), plus go carting and the fair with cousins at Long Lake, MN, where the fun new boat also enabled me to try my wake surfing skills; enjoying a cousins reunion with family from around the country at Lake Metigoshe in North Dakota, the origin of our Lakebrat Story. It somehow doesn’t matter if we haven’t seen the Chicago cousins or the Minnesota cousins or the Colorado cousins for a few years – we pick up where we left off, and the coolers and campfires, pontoon rides and picnics, are as ubiquitous as the waves lapping the shore and the stellar sunsets.

We went to many ski shows on Lake Wylie and celebrated the kids, old and young, who are part of that perennial fan favorite. It’s the only way to spend a Friday, in my opinion 😉. We fished and hiked, went tubing and traversed miles to visit far-flung family in our favorite lake havens. Here at home, our lake pup loves to chase the geese in the muddy shallows of Lake Wylie and investigate the turtles along the shore. Every day is precious, just as every season is a welcome change.

So whether your summer adventures involved the beach, the ocean, mountains, rivers or trails – we celebrate all the memories made and many more to come.

Cheers to fall y’all!