Today is the first official day of summer and I feel like celebrating it.  This celebratory mood might be brought on because the weather outside is summerish.  This is in stark contrast to the weather over the weekend which was yuckish.  The celebratory frame of mind might be brought on because last night I helped my daughter write a sonnet in iambic pentameter for her English class.  Yep, that’s right, it’s the first day of summer and the students at South Kitsap High School are still in class doing meaningful, grade changing work.

To celebrate I put before you four splendid delights of summer.

Delight Number One:  Fresh fruit and veggies.  I like that I can buy a tomato in the middle of January; but I also recognize that tomato tastes awful because it was pulled green and then shipped green but was never vine ripened.  In the summer one can buy vine ripened tomatoes, fresh cherries, and yummy beans.  Eating a watermelon, outside, with a salt shaker and having the delicious juice run down your chin and neck is a delight that everyone should experience annually.

Delight Number Two:  Vitamin D.  Up here in the great Pacific Northwest we have so many slate gray days that the body does not produce enough vitamin D because there is not enough sunlight.  I pound back fortified milk, but it does not produce the same feeling.  When summer comes, I always feel better and have a greater sense of well-being.  Vitamin D.

Delight Number Three:  No lunches.  That is not to say that I do not eat lunch; but during the summer the kids are out of school and I don’t have the constant morning hum-drum work of making lunches.  Because I eat at home most days or in a delish restaurant I have variety.  I always worry about my children because pretty much every day is the same sandwich, brownie, chips.  As summer envelops us no more monotonous lunches for my precious girls and no more monotonous morning routine for their mommy and daddy.

Delight Number Four:  Vacation.  Now that my children are both old enough to enjoy travel we have developed a very solid family vacation tradition.  This year we will travel by car again to the Southwest.  I am looking forward to seeing the Anasazi cliff dwellings this year.  The best part, though, is spending limitless time with my daughters and wife.  Summer brings my family closer together.

I could enumerate many more delights; but this is enough to capture my celebration of summer.