Where Did Summer Go?

Jesiah Donecker/Photo Duane Donecker

Well Thanksgiving is only four days away and it is freezing outside, (for Californians) and it is going to be raining for another couple of days, and I was sitting here in the living room thinking of all the fun things that we did during the summer. Jesiah loves to be outside as much as he possibly can, and he has all kinds of things for playing outside.

One of our favorite things we liked to do was go over to the high school next door called Santana High School, and yes if you are wondering this is one of the schools were there was a shooting, at Santana it happened on March 5, 2001 when Charles Andrew Williams shot and killed two students and wounded 13, it was a horrible day but the school and the neighborhood have recovered well and Jesiah having been born in 2006 of course knows nothing about it.

Well as I was saying we loved to bring a football and go to the football and lacrosse field, Jesiah really likes to watch them play lacrosse when school is in session so he calls it the lacrosse field when most people call it the football field. Him and I would go down to the field and first throw the football around and then tackle each other, of course Jesiah had it rigged so I would have the ball more than he did, so he could tackle me more than he got tackled, it was allot of fun and we would spend a good hour or so doing that, then we would/walk run about a mile or two before we started for home, but of course we would be pirates doing so exploring on the way home so getting home would at least take another hour, (remember the school was right next door)

Jesiah also has a bike and a razor scooter and during the summer and even now he likes to take one of them down to the courtyard of the complex and there would normally be a couple of more kids down there riding their bike or scooter and I would sit down at one of the tables and watch him play for an hour or two until it was time to get up stairs for dinner.

However the thing we loved to do the most last summer was swimming, it was so amazing how well Jesiah did this summer, now one thing must be known we have been taking him into the pool since he was about 6 months old, so he is a water baby. Jesiah started out this summer wearing his Lighting McQueen swimming vest and being scared of the deep end, gradually he got where he could actually go in the deep end and swim around the pool in his vest, I mean actually propelling himself around the pool. About a month into the summer he decided he wanted to shed the vest and graduate to a Sponge Bob ring and he was spending almost all his time in the deep end.

About two months into summer he started to swim between mom and me without his ring but still using it when he was doing his own thing and then one day I was about 4 feet from him when suddenly out of the corner of my eye I saw him slide out his ring and purposely swim to the edge of the pool, needless to say I about had a heart attack when I saw that, but from then on he didn't want a floaty of any kind anymore.  By the end of summer he was swimming the full length of the  pool with nothing to help him, it was a totally amazing summer and I wonder how it went so fast!