I am cheating on fall with summer. If I had to pick only one season as my favorite, I would always say fall. There is something about the air being crisp, the leaves turning, decorating my mantle, making all things “appley” and “crockpoty”, fires in the fireplace, pulling out my tall boots and sweaters and having football on the television (even if it is just background noise for a good nap.) But this summer, this summer may have just converted me. And it’s only July 10th. I have been trying to figure out what it is and why. This is what I have come up with so far.

The weather. Yes, I know what you are thinking. Duh? But I live in the countryside of Virginia, and it is usually just plain sticky hot. Like when you wake up, you can’t even see out of your windows because of the humidity, hot. This summer, many mornings have been in the upper 60’s and the daytime reaches a perfectly warm peak, complete with a breeze. Many nights we jump in our pool after dinner and watch the sunset and almost get chilly. (And I’m not gonna lie, that may or may not be how my kids are getting bathed most of the time this summer.)

It’s also the pace. Our pastor once told us that we live with no margin. No room for error. That has been especially true this year. We have just had a crazy year in our house. Starting two businesses, 3 children under 9, a 19 year old nephew and just life. We have been tossed some curve balls this year and having the kids out of school and just removing that one piece of our routine…no rushing to bed after dinner, no lunch packing in the morning, no rushing out the door for our 30 minute commute to school, and back again in the afternoon, well it has been glorious. And the icing on the cake is their ages. My youngest is now 5. My husband and I literally sat on the beach this year, drank a beer and read a book. A book, people. This is serious progress. No one was eating sand or going in for naps, or running away to be eaten by the ocean.

The last thing has to be the fun line up of plans we have made. We have always kept a pretty busy social calendar, but this year we have been really intentional about our time. We were talking about it yesterday and asking ourselves why that is, and maybe we are just delusional, but we really believe it is because of the app! (gohappy of course. :)) We are probably like most families in that we think, you know, we should do X or we need to do Y. I heard from so and so that ABC is really fun. Well this year we have taken those ideas, put them in the app, and it has turned them into reality. For example, I have really wanted to take the kids tubing and there is a place nearby that I went pretty regularly pre-children (let’s just say I had one tube tied to mine that was dedicated to adult beverages), and we had some friends interested in going with us. We sent them some possible dates in the app, and within 5 minutes, they had voted and we had it on the calendar. Last week I had a girls night out and we were all saying how amazing it was that we actually scheduled one…we literally voted on the dates that worked and within minutes, we had a date. It was the quickest turnaround yet. This exact scenario has played out over and over for us this summer with everything from beach trips, to supper club, to concert events. Shawn and I even invite each other to date nights and RV trips and because it syncs with our calendar, we are holding dates for family time.

The app also shares “moments” privately with those you want to share with. On July 4th, my brother and his husband adopted a baby boy. They have been patiently waiting for this moment to come. Right now, they are in North Carolina as they wait for the paperwork to be finalized, and every day they are adding a ton of pictures to the moment they shared with our family and their friends, and even though I can’t see that little nugget for another week, I still feel connected to their experience.

So I say all of this to say, that means something right? I know I don’t have a crystal ball and it’s too early to say how successful gohappy will be, but I know it HAS to mean something that it has become the most useful app on our phones. We are seeing that in the statistics too. We have already brought on as many new users so far in July that we had in all of June, and June saw a 250% growth over May.

Like most people, it makes me incredibly happy when I have fun things lined up on my calendar. I have a large, ridiculously close family, and friends I love dearly. And despite the curve balls and new company stress, I feel closer to all of them than I have in years. And app or not, there is nothing better for a healthy, happy life than that.