Week 36 & 37 of 2024 (Year in Review) — Summer’s Over!

I knew that the first weekend of September, according to the weather forecast would be that sparkling, shiny last true summer weekend here in South Bohemia and boy, did I plan accordingly. We spent the week preceding it doing all the last fun warm weather things you do before you know you won’t have that kind of summer freedom anymore: taking our little one to the zoo (it was too hot to see many animals but we had fun anyway) and to Dívčí kámen for a picnic and to splash about in the creek near Hamr. The last summer Saturday we spent “camped out” at a nearby riverside park, enjoying the warm air, shade, cool drinks and I felt so happy to have our Mouse running around wild, barefoot and free soaking it all in.

The next day, that Sunday was all mine! After Alex made pancakes for all of us, I snuck away to do one of my favorite summer things which I had forgotten to do ’til that day: yoga outside! Fewer things make me so happy, and it’s free. Well, kind of! I’ve been a Yoga Glo member for nearly ten years now and I love the wide library, experience of the excellent teachers and (relevant to outdoor yoga) the ability to download classes to take with you offline through their app. I can’t say enough good things. (Not sponsored or anything: if you’d like to try a two month free trial, you can check it out here.) It’s been with me through thick and then, through grief, pregnancy, postpartum, illness and injury and all the joyful times in between. (More about my experience with yoga here in a post from 2017)

So anyway, if you’ve never tried dragging your mat outside, try it the next time you can because it’s fantastic. And while I was at it, maybe a bit of reading National Geographic by myself! A whole article! I’ll tell ya, the bar of what fun and relaxation is after you become a parent to a baby or toddler is pretty low. Later that day… picked up a pumpkin foam cold brew for science on they way home from picking up a few things at the store and listening to a podcast, then we had ourselves a little balcony barbecue of salmon, eggplant and zucchini. Also a sneaky s’more (made with Butterkeks and not graham crackers, but still completely worth it). A truly wonderful send-off to our long summer.

Now that it’s autumn (and before it becomes October, fer Chrissakes) it’s a nice time to look back on the summer that was, when my little boy was two years old and we stayed in Europe.

This summer has felt long, slow and relaxing.

As you may know, I’m on my last year of maternity leave but as teachers, both Alex and I get summers off anyways. This year seemed different as Alex had, purely coincidentally, a much longer summer than he usually has. This resulted both in so much relaxing together times as a family and financial stress, to be real with you, as both of us did not make almost any income at all for a matter of months. Uff-da, as they say. This usually makes me quite uncomfortable, even more so with a small child, but like many things this year, I have and am still learning to just go with it, to enjoy what we have and think and live within our means. It’s taken truly all summer to get to a point of zen-like acceptance of this, so that’s the growing I’ve done this year. To have the gift of time sometimes can truly be more important than money, and we stayed really close as a family this year enjoying what we have.

In July we were fortunate enough to go to Karlovy Vary for the festival yet again and it was fantastic as always, but much more exhausting. I think for next time we will tweak things a little bit to place more emphasis on relaxation.

A dear friend of our family passed this summer from cancer, a wonderful woman named Eva who welcomed us here to Budejovice the day we moved here from Prague, helped us get settled in our flat and home here and has always looked after us, almost like a guardian angel. Losing her is deeply felt in our community and the Anglophile community here in Budejovice – such a presence and force of kindness, generosity and pure energy! We will miss her very much.

Our Mouse went to summer camp with us for two weeks and had an absolute ball. It was relieving because we could see how much he enjoyed playing and interacting with other children – a sign of how I really do think he will thrive at preschool when he begins next year.

We spent two weeks in Germany and Denmark for our summer vacation this year which I will write about next! It was so different to any other summer trip we’ve taken before and I look forward to sharing some photos and thoughts with you.

Do you know how sometimes you look back on summer and say “wow, that flew by, I don’t even know how I spent it”? One practice I did from the very beginning to the end of the summer was a short journal entry per day purely on my “summer joys” – something wonderful and seasonal that happened that day so I could actually look back and see right in front of me how I actually spent my summer. I have done a form of this before by writing on a calendar a couple words for each day to jog my memory if where I went or what I did, but this went a step further to describe in detail the little things that make summer the most restorative and fulfilling season (to me). The smell of a campfire, the rustle of the breeze, the warm air on your bare legs as you walk home in the evening wearing a dress. That kind of thing. It did do the trick – not only did this season feel long as it was but it seemed to sort of prolong it even more. A recommended practice to savor your favorite season.

I splurged on a Daughters of India summer dress in August after I got home from my holiday (as I didn’t find anything while abroad) with puffy Bella Baxter sleeves and although I’ve put it away in the closet for awhile, it will be perfect for next year and could not make a better midsummer celebration dress.

I loved two viral songs this summer: Charli XCX’s “360” and Tommy Richman’s “Devil is a Lie” (both that you have surely heard all over social media) – both completely summer-defining and will probably always feel like a time capsule of summer 2024. Although, I must be honest, we listened to Raffi the most – especially in the car driving around Southern Denmark. Will I always associate the Danish West Coast beaches with Raffi from now on? Probably.

Mouse’s favorite summer memories seem to be summer camp, “driving the black car and listening to Raffi” in Denmark, and playing in an oversized tepee at the end of summer festival here in Budejovice. I can’t believe he remembers so many little things about summer, even months ago. Sweet little summer memories.

I hope you enjoyed a nice summer as well and now are looking onward to what the rest of this year will bring. See you hopefully soon with the North Sea Coast trip re-cap. Tell me in the comments (I’d love to read): What is something you enjoyed this summer?