It’s Okay If Your Summer Wasn’t Instagram Worthy

It’s September, which means my social media feeds are currently being flooded with the annual Summer Wrap-Up.

And I genuinely love it.

The cottages. The beaches. The sunsets. The European vacations. The kids jumping off docks. The family photos where everyone somehow coordinated their outfits and nobody appears to have screamed over a missing Croc fifteen minutes beforehand.

Keep posting them… I mean that.

I’m currently on a fairly aggressive personal mission to surround myself with more sunshine and considerably less doom and gloom, so if your family spent July eating gelato in Italy and August paddleboarding somewhere with water so turquoise it looks Photoshopped, I am cheering for you. Post the carousel. Add the nostalgic song. Give me the sunset. I want to see people happy.

But I also think there needs to be a little room on the internet for the people whose summer camera roll is mostly screenshots of things they wanted to do because that was a little more our speed this year.

I have screenshots of places we should visit, restaurants we should try, day trips we should take and things that looked absolutely fantastic when I was lying in bed at 11:47 p.m. convincing myself that tomorrow we would suddenly become one of those spontaneous adventure families.

Spoiler alert: We did not.

Tomorrow usually came and somebody had a friend on their way over, somebody needed a ride somewhere, somebody slept until noon, somebody wanted money and we were staring at our bank accounts like we were performing an archaeological dig.

Turns out, life is expensive. Extremely expensive!

There are days when I stand in the grocery store looking at a $22 bag of grapes and genuinely wonder if I should be speaking to a financial advisor before putting them in the cart. And they’re always already slightly soft. For twenty-two dollars, I would like those grapes hand-polished and individually insured.

So no, we didn’t have the kind of summer where every weekend involved another perfectly planned family adventure.

We said no to a lot.

Sometimes because we had other commitments. Sometimes because we were tired. Sometimes because eight people doing anything becomes approximately the same price as a small kitchen renovation. And sometimes because we simply needed to stay home.

That last one took me a while to be okay with.

Because there’s this strange pressure that comes with summer when you’re a parent. You only get eighteen summers. Make memories. Take the trip. Say yes. Put down your phone. Chase the sunset. Buy the tickets.

Which is lovely advice until you start doing the math.

Then suddenly you’re standing there wondering whether your children are going to remember a magical childhood or just that one summer Mum repeatedly said, “We’re not paying $194 for everyone to go mini golfing.”

I battled with that more than I’d like to admit.

There was always that little voice asking if we were doing enough. If the kids were having enough fun. If everyone else was creating these enormous core memories while mine were wandering down to the local fishing pond again. But you know what?

They loved that fishing pond and those trips without me to the park. They walked there constantly. They met friends. They disappeared for hours and came home sweaty, dirty, hungry and usually carrying some story I only half understood.

There was no reservation required, not an admission fee in sight and kids were just being kids. And maybe that counts more than we give it credit for.

Now, to be fair, a couple of my children did manage to have significantly more glamorous summers than their mother.

G was the extremely lucky recipient of a trip to Myrtle Beach with a family who genuinely operates on pure joy and sunshine, and I could not have been happier for him. Jai explored northern Quebec with my parents and sister as part of her dance travels, which is also slightly more culturally impressive than what I accomplished. (unless Costco Burlington counts as international tourism.)

Chris and I, meanwhile, stayed mostly planted.

Partly because we were busy obsessing over bank accounts, bills and the general cost of keeping a small army of children alive but also because we know exactly what is coming.

Our own version of a European tour begins shortly and lasts approximately nine months. London, mostly. Almost every weekend actually. So technically, we’ll be going to London constantly… it may be London ONTARIO but for now, we identify as international travellers. Please respect our privacy during this exciting chapter.

The hockey schedules are populating with more to come. Dance is eagerly waiting in the wings. Gymnastics is coming. Practices, games, tournaments, carpools, early mornings, late nights and the bizarre family mathematics required to get multiple children into multiple buildings at roughly the same time.

By June, we will once again be exhausted and wondering why nobody warned us that extracurricular activities would become our entire personality.

So maybe staying still this summer wasn’t something we failed to do and maybe it was something we needed.

We slept in. We had mornings without alarms. The kids stayed up too late. They wandered around. They fished. They saw friends. They ate things directly out of the fridge while standing with the door open despite the fact that I have apparently spent seventeen years explaining electricity.

There were days when absolutely nothing happened. And I am learning that absolutely nothing can actually be quite lovely.

Because September has arrived, and with it comes structure. The constant hum of “Where are my shoes?” despite every person in this house owning approximately seventeen pairs.

And suddenly those lazy mornings don’t feel wasted at all.

They feel like exactly what summer was supposed to be.

So if you’re putting together your summer recap right now and realizing you don’t have enough photos for one of those emotional little Instagram reels, I want you to know something.

You didn’t do summer wrong.

If your camera roll is mostly screenshots, random pictures of your kids eating cereal and forty-seven photos you accidentally took inside your purse, you’re fine.

If the vacation didn’t happen, you’re fine.

If you had to say no because groceries, mortgages, sports fees, gas and basic survival already swallowed the budget, you’re fine.

If your kids spent most of July walking to a fishing pond instead of standing beside the ocean, they still had a summer.

There will always be another destination, another attraction, another water park and another perfectly curated list of “25 Things You HAVE To Do With Your Kids This Summer.”

But there will not always be another summer where everyone still lives under your roof and has nowhere particularly important to be on a Tuesday morning.

This year, we didn’t chase summer very hard. We mostly let it happen.

And I think I’m finally okay with that.