It's late and I have at least two dozen other things I could be doing right now (including sleeping). But tonight while canning peaches, saving up some of summer's glory it felt chilly on the deck. And too many leaves crunched under mine and Haven's feet while we picked in the garden so I must write down a bit more of summer. The seasons are turning.

I don't want to forget to mention that my baby turned three, that I now have the most precious goddaughter to my two godsons. That watching my older two play soccer brings me much happiness. I don't want to forget swimming with friends and park days with deep conversation and reading books with my toes in mountain streams.

I don't want to forget the goodness of the hard work of summer or the way some days are just hot and sweaty and grumpy but they can still end with all of us piled into one bed with Barbara Reid's book of Mother's Goose and it's one more summer where no one is too old for it just yet.

I don't want to forget Raine's first triathlon or my own or how Haven had her first ever all clear dentist appointment. And how we went on a date for a cupcake in the city. Or how the girls tried tubing for the first time and how all my babies hair smells after long days in the sun. How Liam turned into a vicarious reader over night and devoured chapter book after chapter book.

I don't want to forget the family photos in the rain (not the best year but I still look at them with love) and my watching the way my kids are growing into such good friends and how they can play imagination games for hours. There was dinning under the big tree on our garden harvest everyone helped grow with some black keys on the side. We stayed up to watch the stars.

I don't want to forget the tenderness of celebrating fifteen years.

I don't want to forget that we loved and we laughed. How I rediscovered something about being beloved.

Today is Father's Day. Even as I write this it is in-between catching a tiny bouncy ball with you (pig in the middle with Liam), the girls are running around shrieking (with joy but it is still incredibly loud) and all the yumminess of the breakfast the kids made for you (with a little help) is covering every inch of counter top we have. It's your eighth Father's Day and we are closing in on our 16th year of life together.

Funny thing when you get married when you are barely out of high school, you don't talk too much about whether/when/how many kids you want. I wasn't one of those women who always wanted to be a wife and mother and you weren't one of those men who always wanted to be a husband and a father. Both of us were just barely out of our we never want to have kids cynical teen years so I guess we believed we would figure it out as we went along, if we thought about it at all. When I hear how people thought about what kind of a parent their partner would be as a part of the decision-making process before they joined their lives together, I can't relate.

So all this to say, as I said when I hugged you this morning, I love our chaos Aaron and I love you even more than I did fifteen years ago - but I sure didn't see it coming.

I didn't think to think about whether you would be open to parenting much differently than I am sure either of us would have guessed. I didn't imagine about whether you would watch me birth our babies in our own home. I didn't wonder about whether you would support them in their own journey, not yours.

I didn't ask whether you would take them on special outings and teach them how to cook and build things and how to climb mountains.

I wouldn't have wanted to think about whether you would put down boundaries, boundaries you never would have imagined having to put down, because you put us first.

I didn't know you would work this hard, at work and at home, yet still have time to be funny and play lego and coach soccer and make crafts at the kitchen table.

I didn't worry if you would still love me as motherhood and life changed me and my beliefs. If I thought of anything it was that our love was strong and our desire to live out the journey of this life together was firm and that you believe in a God of love and grace and forgiveness. And darling, as far as you being a father is concerned, I was too young to know it - but that was all I needed to know.

Last year I wrote about Aaron on Father's Day too