Blur

So, all of a sudden, it's the night before the first day of school. How did this happen? I mean, I KNOW how it happened, but WOW that was a quick summer. Admittedly, Ree does go to a year-round school, and summer break was only five weeks this year, but sheesh!

Tonight I was all proud of myself for having Ree set out her clothes for tomorrow and for remembering to ask her what she wants in her lunch and in her snack. Then as I was tucking her in, I realized we need to take first day of school photos tomorrow. (Mental note: Get up 5 minutes earlier than usual for a school day.) It wasn't until she was in bed that I realized Oh! I should get the school supplies out of the shopping bag (in her room, of course) and label them and put them in her backpack, which I still need to find (also in her room, of course). More to do in the morning! Better make that 15 minutes early.

You know, I used to be an organized person. Really. But I've read articles noting research has proven that we only have so much willpower/patience, which is why we are supposed to do things like exercise in the morning and why you don't want to be the last case of a day that a judge hears. I think this is what happens to me in terms of organization/productivity/coherent thought. I start out strong in the morning, and by the end of the day, I am shot. Brain is mush.

This morning started out great. Michael woke us up at 6:15, but I actually felt pretty good for once and I was out of bed and functioning by 6:45. (I couldn't get up right away. Really. I had to at least somewhat enjoy my last day before having to rush around in the morning again.) Got everyone breakfast, cleaned up, worked out, brushed the dogs (they are shedding like mad), vacuumed (to deal with the dog fur everywhere), showered, answered some work emails, and got the family out the door by 9:45. Not to bad by our standards.

Then we headed to Jungle Rapids where they have an indoor play area with lots of climbing stuff and ball pits. When we got there, we were the only people in the place and there was no music or any other noise. It was kinda creepy, but the kids had a great time. We stayed for almost two hours, and at the end it was pretty crowded and my tired, hungry children seemed to get injured a lot. (Nothing serious, just lots of whining.)

We had a gift card for Applebee's, so we headed there for lunch. Natalia asked for a high chair (hallelujah!) but then refused to sit in it (boo!). She had ants in her pants while we were waiting and didn't even want to read books with me. She mostly just climbed in and out of the booth. She did okay with her food at first, then she just wanted to lay on the booth. Actually, she and her brothers just wanted to lay on the booth. They were exhausted.

Although Applebee's is only 10 minutes from our house and we employed every possible technique to keep the kids awake (stay awake or you have to listen to Mom and Dad sing!), Leon passed out on the car ride home. Miraculously, he let me tuck him back in when we got home. Unfortunately, he chugged a juice box at lunch and didn't go to the restroom before we left the restaurant, so 30 minutes later he was back up to potty, and I don't think he ever fell asleep again. In the meantime, we'd had an epic battle getting Natalia out of the car (most of our days are filled with epic battles with her lately, hurray for being 2 1/2!) and I was trying to get some work done. (I technically work half days from home on Monday, but I have all weekend to get in the work. I always have grand plans of working two hours on Saturday and two hours on Sunday so that all I have to do is periodically check email on Monday, but I almost always have at least two hours of work left to do on Monday.)

Got some work done, and then I took off with Ree to get her new dance shoes. She outgrew her ballet and tap shoes around April, but I avoided getting her new shoes since she was on the fence about taking dance again. ("I want to try ice skating!") The poor girl practically limped through the dance recital. Then she stated summer dance classes last week, still wearing the old shoes. So I promised her that we would get her new shoes before tomorrow's class. We did try and go on Saturday during a super-epic shopping trip, but we discovered the dance store is not open on the weekends in the summer.

Thankfully, shoe buying turned out to be incredibly easy and when we were done, we headed to a local frozen yogurt place where I was able to find not one, but two flavors of dairy-free sorbet to eat. (I've recently discovered I have all sorts of food allergies and sensitivities. It's been an interesting journey.)

We made it home within an hour of leaving. I sat down on the bed with my laptop, intending to work until it was time to leave again to go to the open house at Ree's school. The room felt warm. I mentioned to Jeff that I had noticed the thermostat was set for 78 degrees, but it was reading 80 degrees in the house, and that seemed weird. (I was too tired to have a though beyond it being "weird.") That's when we discovered the A/C wasn't running. We couldn't even get the fan on. Then it occurred to me I had been awfully hot around 4 or 5am and the air had probably been off since then. We have ceiling fans in every room, and we had been gone so much, that we hadn't even noticed the heat building all day. Thankfully, after a series of phone calls and texts, we were able to get people from the company that installed our heat pump out to our house within an hour or so. It turned out to be a quick fix, and we are cool again.

We had planned on getting to the open house at 4:00, but it was 4:15 by the time we left, and the kids were engrossed in Arthur, a show they don't normally get to watch. So they finished it, and then we all headed off to school so that Jeff and I could both see her classroom. Ree met her teacher, saw that there is very little to see in a first grade classroom (just her desk and the reading center in first grade versus her table and the art center and the reading nook and the club house and the centers and the baskets of toys in kindergarten) and we were quickly back at home. I made dinner, and then was finally able to sit down and finish work. Of course as soon as I finished it was time to walk the dogs and start the bedtime routine...

I am thinking that is how a lot of our days go, and perhaps that is why summer has gone by so quickly. Maybe things will slow down with school starting. Hey, a girl can dream!

Vacation

So we got back from a family vacation last Friday, and I haven't posted anything about it. Anywhere. In the modern world of instant gratification and constant status updating, I am apparently a complete and utter failure. There was no grand announcement of my vacation plans, and no steady stream of fabulous pics while we were away. Part of my reason for not posting is I do a lot of work in internet security, and there is nothing sillier than posting, "Can't wait to be gone on vacation!" (Translation: Come rob me soon!) followed up by, "We are having such a great time at this distant destination!" (Translation: Now! Rob me now!) Granted, we don't really have anything worth stealing. Our house is mostly filled with broken toys and stained children's clothing with the occasional outdated piece of electronics thrown in for fun. We do possibly have the world's largest collection of toddler-size Angry Birds underwear, but alas to would-be preschool looters, we took most of the collection with us.

But the other reason for not posting is the pressure. Yes, the pressure. Have you looked at what people say? This great! So glad to be away! The beach is wonderful! Fun! Fun! Fun! This is the most amazing thing EVER.

Our vacations, especially with children involved, can never live up to that. Personally, I think everyone writing things like that is lucky, insane, or has a very selective and limited memory. (Helloooo vacation Jello shots!) We've been fortunate enough to have a wonderful vacation with our children. My cousin got married in Orlando around Thanksgiving 2011, and we got to spend a week there. In addition to going to the wedding, we celebrated Leon and Michael's birthday and spent a couple of days at Disney World. Things went really well, but they weren't perfect. Natalia screamed in the car on the way down and the way back. (Not to mention, thanks to holiday weekend traffic, the return trip on I-95 took 13 hours instead of the usual 9. On the bright side, that allowed our kids to experience the fast food trifecta of having McDonald's for breakfast, Wendy's for lunch, and Burger King for dinner. That clearly has to be on someone's bucket list.) Then there was Michael. Poor little guy got so stressed out he broke out in hives every morning, then they miraculously disappeared the day after the wedding and he was fine for the last day away. His suffering did lead to some (unintentionally) entertaining memories such as Michael (that's him on the left) walking around Disney World in Ree's sun hat to cover his skin since we were afraid the hives were an allergic  reaction to sunscreen.

And then there was last summer's vacation. It wasn't horrible, but I suppose I did have unnaturally high expectations after the Orlando adventure, and last summer's vacation was more, um, real life. Among other things, there was no air conditioning in our hotel the first night, no electricity in our friends' house the last two nights thanks to a freak derecho, and we got to come home and buy a new heat pump (air conditioner) for our house.

I would say this year's vacation fell somewhere in the middle. We went to Cincinnati to visit family, and we had a pretty good time. The kids had fun, and we all survived. So maybe those of us with kids can just start sharing that. Went on vacation, and we survived! For our family, at least, that pretty much sums it up.

(And don't worry, vacation photos will be shared at some point. There were actually many enjoyable times, and we even have some pics to prove it.)