By Judy Daniell 
It’s that time of year again at our house. Shirts are optional, lunch is from the grill, and visits to the pool are filled with cannonballs and rough-housing.
For about six weeks every summer, our household embarks on what we affectionately call “Daddy Time.”
My husband is in the school business and while he doesn’t get the 10 weeks off he did when he was a teacher, he still gets a super-awesome summer break that he enjoys with our boys while mom heads off to work. (Which, now that I work from home, isn’t nearly as painful as it was when I would leave a house of sleeping boys to head to the office.)
This began about nine years ago, shortly after I returned to work part-time after staying home with the boys for a few years. Prior to that, my husband would embark on a summer job, while I was home with the kids. Once I returned to work, we figured I could make more going full-time over the summer, so we switched roles and he stayed home during his summer vacation.
And everyone loves it.
Frankly, he’s much better at staying home than I ever was. He’s organized. He likes to cook. And laundry gets washed, folded, and put away on the same day! All things that still elude and baffle me.
In the beginning, no one was playing sports, everyone napped, and we were up to our eyeballs in diapers.
Now, Daddy Time looks much different.
Gone are the lazy days of summer, filled with morning naps and afternoon dips in the horse tank. Instead, the days are spent shuttling between sports camps and the pool.
Gone are the evenings filled with chasing fireflies in the yard. In their place, they’re chasing pop-fly’s at the ballfields.
And we knew that the sweetness of having young boys at home for the summer would soon turn to the craziness of having ball players. We watched as our friends with older kids ran all over creation with their older boys.
And we knew to treasure it. So we did.
And now that we’re running all over creation….we’re treasuring this time too.
And the boys….well, they love having their dad all to themselves for the summer.
And I’m grateful for the time that my husband gets to spend molding and shaping these young men we are raising together, and there’s no one else I’d rather have my boys emulate than their father.
We’re in single digits with how many summers we have left with all the kids in the house. Six!!! This is getting real now.
In between lawn-mowing and bike-riding, my boys are having conversations. Real ones. About the big stuff.
About relationships and friendships and sports teams and life.
And that’s why Daddy Time is our favorite.
We can’t get this time back. We can’t do it over.
We’ve got them for a quick minute before they start making their own life choices.
And I’m grateful their father has six weeks every year to spend molding these boys of mine into men.
by Kimberly Keys 
by Bree Sprual 
by Vicki Bahr 
by Jaybie D. 
by Brittany Moore 
by Charissa Bates 
