Summer Wrap

It’s the first day of school here in the Indiana bit of Chicagoland. I know, for many of you, this is way early – you’re still in summer mode with pool and beach days, kids staying up late and icy cold cocktails.

Not us! After the Husband left for a flight yesterday, it was a mad dash for us girls to get ready for the first day of school: we squeezed in baths, lunch boxes, backpacks and even a movie before an early bedtime. Today, it’s off to school! 

Even though I have at least 3-4 other posts in various states of incomplete (eeek!!), this feels like a good time to take stock in how summer went – yep, past tense – even though it’s 88 today and summer doesn’t technically end for another six weeks.

We get about seven weeks of summer break in our school district. In that time, we managed 2 weeks of swim lessons, a month of tennis lessons and over 2400 miles in family road trips.

Here are a few summer break highlights until I have a minute to finish up the post about the this year’s lake trip. If you can’t wait that long (our lake weeks are pretty stellar), you can read about last year’s trip.  Since I’m flying solo for a few days and have school schedules to sort out, I definitely won’t get much more writing done this week!

Vacation began with the Little wrapping up her dance career to a song from Aladdin – a movie she still refuses to watch. My pocketbook is certainly grateful she’s into the more affordable parks and rec sports world, but she was awfully cute in her little dance costumes!

After a couple of weeks of swim and tennis lessons, the season’s first road trip: it’s just over 600 miles to the old home town in Upstate New York. This time, we made a pit stop to spend the day with the newest members of the family. Yep – after nearly 9 years, the Husband’s side finally has more grandkids to dote on. And more twins, yippee!

Next up, a few days at home and my parents weren’t even in town! They’re always off somewhere (currently? They’re in Capetown!), but at least the kids got to see them.  If you read the last post, you’ll know that we spent a few days with the family and then the girls stayed with their grandparents for a week.

Every time we do this I have these wild ideas that I’ll finally repaint the bathroom and get to a photo project I keep avoiding. And every time, I end up not really finishing any big projects and lamenting that my bathroom is still the odd pale blue from when the paint store mixed my color wrong. Usually I end up just doing my normal house stuff and maybe a bit of purging.

This time was honestly no different. I still hate the color of the bathroom, and I still have a drawer full of school art projects to purge and a shelf full of old photos to sort. I did however rearrange some closets! Yep, it’s a wild life!

The girls and grandparents came home in time to celebrate July 4 with the neighborhood and then we geared up for another road trip – this one about 550 miles to central Minnesota. All those people who rag on the Land of 10,000 Lakes and its crappy winters ought to see it in the summer – it’s stunning! A quick pic is all I’ll share for now – I can’t divulge too much before the Lake Life Part II post!

We got back from the lake happy and relaxed, and then…

Oh CRAP, school starts soon!  Between shopping for school supplies and new shoes and lunch items, last chance play-dates and dragging the kids on a Costco run, summer vacation wound down pretty quickly. Add in a teeth cleaning (they both had cavities, gasp) and hair cuts for both girls, a town party where I participated in a blood drive, and here we are.

All in all it was a good summer – only one stomach bug (lucky me),  no trips to the urgent care or ER, and nearly every weekend was packed with parties, bbqs, and house-guests. The kids are happy to be back in school, and I’m about to dive into the depths of their rooms to see what hoarding I can undo!

What are your end of summer/back to school plans? Does it include a cocktail??