Summer Lovin'

At the risk of sounding completely mental, I'm gonna say that I'm really looking forward to summer. Yes, I realize that summer = kids 24/7 and that it wasn't all that long ago that I blogged about spring break killing me. Before that, I blogged about school closures for snow & floods driving me mad. I'm aware of the irony. I'm just so ready to chill out a bit schedule wise though. Take tonight for instance: I began getting the kids into bed at 8:00 PM. At 9:00 PM they were all still awake and whining about the injustice of going to sleep while it was still daylight out. To which the only decent reply that I could come up with was that I'm a horrible, monstrous ogre of a mother that doesn't want them to fall asleep in class. If it were summer vacation, we could have built a fire and roasted some marshmallows for smores instead and just slept in in the morning. At 10:00 PM, the boys had all finally fallen asleep but Brooke had gotten over tired to the point that instead of resting she was bawling that she missed her slide bed. Apparently, it was "the only bed I ever loved." (For those of you not in the know, her slide bed was a loft bed with a metal slide on it that she had outgrown and it took up 75% of her bedroom. We sold it on craiglist to get her a "big girl bed" over a year ago.) Now, it's the bed that got away.

OKay, off subject, I just clicked spellcheck and it's telling me that smores isn't a word. Neither is Craigslist. Is that true? I mean, smores... come on... Well, anyway, I want to go camping. I'd really like to go on a good hike. Washington summers are often gorgeous, 70 degree affairs just perfect for getting out in nature and taking in the insane amount of beautiful green-ness (Now that I know is not a word. No spell check required.) I'm psyched to see the kids run their lemonade stand some more. People are so good. Did you know that they almost always get tipped? I would have never have thought to tip at a lemonade stand. Heck, I'm sort of grossed out at the thought of drinking lemonade that was possibly made by children and would most likely never stop at a random lemonade stand & actually drink the stuff anyway. (Don't drink the Kool-Aid!!!) Hmm... I'm curious if spell check likes the word Kool-Aid or not. Let me see...

Nope. It would take Aid but not Kool. Interesting. Oh, okay... It will accept Koolaid. I could have sworn it was hyphenated.

There are only 24 days of school left. Which means that there are only 26 days until my baby girl turns seven years old. It's hard to believe that my YOUNGEST child is a shoe tying, fluent reading, teeth missing, real life first grader turning second grader. I'm actually kind of not okay with it, but just like all things I tell her not to do, she just keeps getting older even though I tell her to stop. One good thing about having older kids is that our summer vacation IS admittedly less complicated when we can go to the beach and not worry that any of our children will eat the sand or stick random objects up their nose. Having everyone potty trained helps too. My friend Chelsea & I were talking earlier about the logistics of going hiking with an infant. Kelty backpacks are fabulous, but where are you supposed to dispose of diapers when you're in the middle of nowhere? I mean, do you seriously have to pack it in pack it out? Yuck. I don't think we're missing out on anything there.

So, there you have it: the random ramblings of my sleepy mind. I'm dieting & exercising again. My brain is always a little, um, quirky on a diet. Hmm... maybe that's where the jonesing for smores thing came in... So, what are your summer plans?