The good old days.

On Sunday afternoon, I went outside to check on the kids. They were playing with the next door neighbors and things had gotten quiet - a sure sign that something was amiss.

They had been racing through the backyard with wagons and dump trucks and bikes for almost 3 hours. When I found them, they were just quietly milling around.

Peter was muttering and shaking his fists and looking up to the sky and Caleb was looking down and kicking up loose dirt with his feet.

They looked like two old farmers who had finally given up on their crops and were mad at God for not sending more rain.

I asked what they were doing and Peter replied, "We're mad! We want to old days back!"

The old days? Bottles, diapers, crawling, potty training, I thought. What are they talking about?

"The old days? What do you mean?" I asked trying not to laugh as the dirt was billowing up from their kicks. I even had to duck a few times as their fist shaking was getting mightier and mightier.

"We miss the golf cart and the trampoline."

Ah,yes. The golf cart.

Jacob and Caleb's grandfather brought an old golf cart to their house over the summer and left it for several weeks for them to play with. The kids would pile into it and do lap after lap after lap around the backyard every afternoon.

I got conflicting reports on the whereabouts of the golf cart. Jacob told me his grandpa took it away because his mom said it was killing the grass. Caleb said he took it away because it needed to be repaired.

I'm not exactly sure where the beloved golf cart went but it disappeared right around the same time the trampoline did.

They all seemed pretty nonchalant about both items when they were initially removed, so I was a little confused as to why all the fist shaking and dirt kicking was going on now, a month and a half later.

But then it hit me. They do miss the trampoline and the golf cart but maybe in their own little way, they were shaking their fists and kicking the dirt because they really miss summer.

They miss staying up late and sleeping late. They miss playing for hours and hours on end. They miss the freedom of summer and the hot sun.

So as the late afternoon sun was casting long shadows, they were trying with all of their five-year-old might to tell summer not to go. And to warn fall that they weren't to be messed with.

Don't try to come around here fall, each fist shake was saying. Stay away cold weather, all the dirt kicking cautioned.

Or maybe they really just miss the golf cart and the trampoline.