Preparations

It always blows my mind when we get to this point in the summer. It’s still July but school starts in, get this, 2 1/2 weeks! And this year, I have two children starting school! Of course, GMan is only going to preschool two days a week. A total of ten hours away from home. Ten. Glorious. Hours! Oops, I digressed…anyhoo, we’ve already started preparing for school.

We found some shirts for JBelle on sale at Target. She still needs some shorts/skorts/pants and I’ll probably wait to get her some cooler weather ware since it’ll be awhile before she actually needs it. We also needed a lunch box for GMan. I found the aisle with the lunch boxes, quickly breezed by the licensed character choices down to the end of the aisle where the choices are you know, red, blue, green or black. Well, GMan wouldn’t have anything to do with that. He looked over his shoulder, spotted another lunch box and said, “I want that one! The pirate one!”

“Are you sure? How about this blue one here?” Nope, he would not be dissuaded! So, the pirate one it was. I think we made a good choice, he’s so happy about it.

And terribly excited about going to school with it.

The first couple of days after purchasing it, he carried it around the house. He even got mad at me when I removed the crumpled up filler paper and the Rachael Ray magazine subscription postcard that were inside! Thankfully they were only in the recycling bin and were easily retrieved!

The next couple of weeks are going to be a whirlwind of activity. We’ll get in as much pool time as possible plus get around to going on those field trips that still haven’t happened! I’m thinking the Adventure Science Museum, maybe the Frist, JBelle will go to a cooking class, we’ll paint some pottery, play in the bicentennial park fountains (a yearly summer tradition), go to the Wave Pool. Oh, dear…I think we may have left too much to the end to do! Plus, my grand plans for Frozen Fridays never worked out as I had imagined. We still have not visited Las Paletas, Pied Piper or Bobby’s Dairy Dip! Hmmm….I think Frozen Fridays will have to continue through the end of August since it’s still technically summer.

A few things we have managed to do: JBelle & I saw the “Kit Kittredge” movie together, GMan and I saw “Wall-E” together, JBelle and DB went to an IRL race together, and of course, lots and lots of pool time!

Forgotten How to Blog

I was just thinking about how I feel as though I’ve forgotten how to blog. Then I went to Twitter to see what was going on there and lo and behold there were “forgotten how to blog” tweets! Scary. And sad. I feel like I have things to say but for whatever reason, I either don’t feel like saying them or I have trouble accurately expressing my thoughts in this forum. Or maybe Twitter’s 140 character limit and Facebook’s status updates have suppressed my ability to actually write thought out and coherent posts.

Anyhoo…it’s summer. I mentioned back in May my apprehension surrounding the onset of this season. I’m pleased to report that it has not been as bad as I anticipated. Don’t misunderstand me now, we’ve had our moments, like a hundred times a day, but all in all summer is going swimmingly.

It’s been a weird summer, too. First, let’s talk about the weather. Here in Nashville we experienced some pretty intense heat early in June which is unusual for us and frankly was unnerving since no one has forgotten our weeks of 100 degree last August! But then around the time we left for our trip, the weather settled into a more recognizable pattern of behavior. Then we got into the first week of July, which I typically expect to be “hotter ‘n Hades”, yet we had very mild temps. The kicker was July 4th. I can not remember an Independence Day anywhere that I’ve lived that was a mild and cool and pleasant as this past July 4th in Nashville! We actually wanted to be outside! Bizarre.

Second, being away from home for 12 days was strange. Usually by now, we’re in a fairly good routine but our travels followed immediately by an extended visit from my parents kind of threw us off a bit. Today I felt as if we were started summer all over again! I really need a plan for the rest of the week. We went swimming today and then headed to the Barnes & Noble in Opry Mills to hear Lisa Loeb sing songs from her new children’s album, Camp Lisa. I have a really hard time leaving book store empty handed so in addition to the CD, each of the kids got a book (mainly for putting up with their starstruck mother!)

Frozen Fridays have been waylayed a bit as well. We did Frozen Friday in Washington D.C. by having ice cream in the Natural History Museum. I was disappointed because the Smithsonian museum guide we had indicated that there was a gelato bar in the Natural History Museum however, when we arrived, it turned out to be plain old ice cream. I’m not complaining, much, because it did perk the kids up. Prior to that they had been rather whiny and fussy. Frankly, they didn’t even deserve ice cream but desperate times called for desperate measures! We didn’t do Frozen Friday at camp though we could have since there was ice cream in the canteen. July 4th was on Friday and DB’s brother made homemade vanilla ice cream. We got to add all sorts of candy & cookie bits to it for a homemade “blizzard” of sorts. (Though I would not have turned my cup upside down like they do at DQ!)

If you’re Facebook, you may have seen that I added photos from our Washington, D.C. trip. I’m working on getting those onto Flickr as well. And hopefully, I’ll get my camp and July 4th pictures up soon.

Anticipating Summer

School is almost out. And I’m simultaneously looking forward to and dreading summer. Summer can be fun. There are lots of things we get to do during summer that don’t happen at other times. Like: spending hours and hours at the pool; not having to get up early to get ready for school (though GMan has been waking terribly early lately which doesn’t bode well for summer sleeping in time); our annual trip to Camp Manatawny; JBelle will be going to Girl Scout sleep away camp for the first time; Fourth of July party and fireworks; a visit from Granny & Pa!; Sounds baseball games; playing in the hose in the backyard; catching lightning bugs.

Summer can also be a drag. Like: sunburn; mosquitoes; I hear that we will have to contend with cicadas at some point which will probably cut into our pool time; extreme heat. Our children are at the ages now where they really get on each other’s nerves and there is A LOT of bickering and telling on and general aggravating that happens on a daily basis. Our children also have this insatiable need to know “what are we doing now/next/today/tonight/tomorrow/5 weeks from now”! or “where are we going now/next/today/tonight/tomorrow/5 weeks from now”! I’m trying to get myself prepared for the inevitable. I’m working on a “calendar” of summer days and activities (currently it resides in my brain which is a scary and dangerous place for planning such as this). About all I’ve come up with is that we will be at the pool 3 days a week, one day will be “field trip” day and the other day will be “stay at home and do nothing and don’t bother Mommy because if you do you’ll be sorry” day. Sounds good, huh?

Oh, and Frozen Fridays. I’m really looking forward to Frozen Fridays which will actually start this Friday! What are Frozen Fridays you ask? Nashville has several delicious and unique ice cream stores, many of which I’ve never even tried but I’ve heard a lot about them. Places like Las Paletas, Bobbie’s Dairy Dip, and Pied Piper Creamery that are locally owned and operated and then places like Dippin’ Dots, Cold Stone Creamery and Maggie Moos that are chain restaurants. Every other Friday we’ll go to one of these shoppes and get ice cream. On the other Fridays, we’ll have homemade ice cream! DB bought an ice cream maker several weeks ago. So far, we’ve only made chocolate (which was delicious!) and we’re looking forward to trying new recipes and concoctions in our ice cream maker.

I guess all in all, there is more to look forward to than to dread so…I’ll brace myself and say, “Bring on Summer!”