Every summer that I have experienced as a teacher has been glorious (except the summer of 2016, which we shall not talk about here). I’m not afraid to admit that one of the perks of being a teacher has been the summers, where one is carefree and has the whole of the world to roam.

We have chosen not to purchase a house in all of these years. That has some benefits and has some drawbacks. One of the drawbacks has been that we don’t have a permanent place to go in the summers. We don’t have a house that we go back to, where we have to clean everything up and settle in. My daughters have never had a fixed place where they go back and say, “This is our home!”

But one of the benefits of not having a place to go in the summer has been the simple fact that every summer is open! Usually around December of each year, we start thinking about where we are going to go in the summer and what glorious adventures are going to be waiting on us when we go there. We have spent summers in London, summers in Ontario, summers in Vancouver, summers on the road. We’ve gone to Oklahoma, had musical road trips, visited Spain, gone to Disney World…it’s really been kind of glorious.