Summer!

Ack! It's summer! I am officially the parent of a middle schooler. Yikes!

The kids went to school from 10-11 yesterday. One stupid hour. I suppose the weird late start time was so the middle/high school could go for their hour and still run all of the buses. My neighbor who teaches middle school was already home to drop off her daughter at 10am. Both kids were glad to go because they pretty much spent an hour eating candy and cupcakes. Their desks and classrooms were already cleaned out so it was an hour of fun.

Pawpaw picked them up at 11, took them to lunch and then fishing and (unexpectedly) swimming at his lake. Sadie and I joined them at the lake around 2:30. Sadie LOVES to swim. I'm not sure that she's ever had to jump from the side or a dock to get into the water before because she was really nervous and excited, barking her goofy head off before I'd finally throw her off the dock or else she'd awkwardly jump/fall from the bank and swim and swim. Sadie had a love/hate relationship with Logan's orange life jacket and kept grabbing the "pillow" part of it and trying to drag him to shore. She managed to pull him under for a second, scared him and that was the end of the novelty of swimming with the dog. Dad found him a different life jacket that Sadie wasn't interested in retrieving and the fun (mostly) resumed. Sadie finally jumped off the dock once and learned to gracefully jump from the side. It was suddenly 4:30 and I realized we needed to boogie home because the kids needed to be showered and changed and fed before Logan's baseball meeting that was all the way across town at 6.

Logan is starting coach pitch baseball this year. I'm not completely sure what this entails, but I'm pretty sure they will be learning the actual rules of the game and the various fielding positions rather than the chaos of throwing 20 kids into the field and everyone mobbing every ball that was tee ball. (Sigh. I will miss tee ball!) He will practice TWICE weekly with a game on Saturday. Ugh. His practices start at 5:30 and I'm lucky to have left work by 5:30 during the summer. That means two days of packing both lunch and dinner for the kids. Oh, and remembering the baseball gear in the morning. Fortunately, Gene will meet us at the field so I will be able to skip some of the practices if I'm really disgusting from work.

Camp Zone starts Monday so today I will drag the kids to Walmart and stock up on lunch items and swim gear and sunblock. I also need to try to find breakfast foods they will actually eat. They will be outside running around all day long. Kaylin will need to eat a little more than picking at 1/2 cup of cold cereal. We will leave for camp at the same time we left for school (7:25am) so I have to find something easy and potentially portable for Kaylin who likes to roll out of bed at 7:05. I love three months without homework or school obligations. I hate packing lunches. I'm usually in charge of both dropping off and picking up the kids from school because it's on my way, but Gene can do either if needed. Camp is right in front of the zoo so it's ALWAYS my responsibility. Hmmmm. Summer is crammed with activities. When swimming lessons start in July and baseball hasn't yet ended, we'll have a couple of weeks of Monday-Thursday practices/lessons right after work. Yep, I still prefer summer to school. At least when we're home there are NO homework obligations! All the extras are just fun.