Summer Vacation

School's out for the summer and I love it!  The kids are home all the time.  We get to sleep in, go running together, and spend the day working and playing as a family.  I kind of feel bad for Jared who has to go to work and misses out on a lot of the good memories we're making.  Of course our days are not all sunshine and laughter, but most of the time it really is fun.  In fact, I hear giggling and singing coming from downstairs right now.  In the past, we haven't had a set summer schedule.  Instead, we would take each day as it came and do whatever sounded fun.  That's been pretty nice, but it does lead to many days with nothing to do and the laughter and singing turning into boredom and bickering.  This year our summertime is filled with both work and play and not too much down time.  I think my life might actually be busier during the summertime than it is during the school year.


For our summer this year we've gotten together with some other families and are putting on a little musical production of Mary Poppins.  Every Monday we have practice and after practice we often end up shuffling kids around for impromptu play dates.  Tuesday evenings we go to the pool for a couple of hours.  The girls all have swim lessons (thanks to my talented and generous friend Esther) and like having the time to play with each other and their friends. I spend Wednesday mornings teaching piano lessons so I actually encourage the girls to turn on the TV and zone out for two plus hours.  They've all adopted Madison's love of Dr. Who so we're grateful that our local library has all of the seasons for them to watch one Wednesday morning at a time.  By Thursday I'm ready for a day of nothing, even if the kids are not.  Friday and Saturday don't have any specific activity on the calendar, but we usually head to the library to get more books for the coming week and there's always at least one church activity each weekend.

It sounds great, right?  But there's just one problem with the kids being home all the time and it's that they're here ALL. THE. TIME.  I love it, but there are some downsides to this arrangement.

First, the messes.  The messes are never ending in the summertime.  During the school year I have my little morning routine down. After the kids leave for school I make my rounds of the house, setting back in order everything that was unsettled by the morning rush.  In the summer, we all work together in the mornings and things are nice and neat for approximately 15 minutes.  Instead of a quick pick up in the morning and another one in the evening, we're dealing with messes all day long.  For example, the other day I asked the girls to pick up in the yard.  They are spending a lot of time outside and things from the house and the garage seem to migrate out there and never find their way back.  After they have picked up I went outside and was able to find the following: three socks, one pair of shoes, 17 nerf bullets, two spoons, one cup, two bowls, a scooter, and two helmets.  Our poor, neat German neighbors with their perfect yards probably wish we would just move away and take our messiness with us.


Second, the food.  I've been trying to teach the kids that boredom does not equal hunger, but the message doesn't seem to be sinking in.  We go through waaay more food in the summertime.  The upside here is that instead of family meal time being just a dinner time thing, we are enjoying family meal times three times a day. This afternoon we had a great conversation over lunch about what the girls want to be when they grow up, why they think they would like that specific field, and what they need to do to make it happen.  So I guess this one is really a benefit of summertime.

How about all of you?  What do you do in the summertime?

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