I LOVE JULY! The month of July is literally one of my very favorite times of the year.  The weather is amazing, the BBQs are fired up, the swimming pool is open, summer vacation is in full force, there are fireworks galore, we watch fun parades, our families get together, there’s rodeos and picnics and country music concerts, not to mention that everyone’s flying their American flags and patriotism abounds all month long….awww yes….I truly love July.

I think my love of July began when I was a little girl. I still remember all of the neighborhood kids getting out their bicycles (mine was a Schwinn with the banana seat with flowers on it and a rusty little bell on the handlebars that I loved) to decorate them for a Fourth of July neighborhood parade. I remember winding red, white, and blue streamers through the wheels and attaching little American Flags to the seat and feeling so proud of my lovely creation. The month of July brings back memories of climbing our great big cherry tree in the backyard, digging holes with my sister in the dirt to try and trying to fill it with water to make a swimming pool for our Barbie dolls (only to be shocked when the water was quickly absorbed into the dirt rather than making a pool!), playing kick-the-can in the yard with my siblings, making chalk cities on our driveway, my dad BBQing hamburgers on Saturday nights, having family pickle ball tournaments in our backyard court, and trying to lick my grape popsicle as fast as I could so it wouldn’t melt all over me. Yes, July is full of happy memories for me, especially because it represented such fun times with my brothers and sisters and my Mom and Dad.

As we head into this weekend and the festivities of next week the thing that has been on my mind is the importance of remembering to set aside all our stresses and put down all the distractions and simply focus on having fun with our families.  That’s not always easy to do when you are going through a hard time or when you are carrying loads of stress on your shoulders. But when our time on this earth comes to an end, which in truth could happen to any one of us at any moment, we will never regret having spent quality time with our family…and we won’t leave this life thinking it was worth stressing over things or spending time on emails, over spending quality time really focused on our loved ones. Not to mention the fact that the celebratory fireworks will be far more enjoyable if we aren’t staring down at our cell phones!

Have an amazing weekend in flip flops 🙂

~Amy Rees Anderson