A photo of the month of June:
Summer is a busy time, and June is particularly so. Baseball and soccer are still going full force (and I don't even have practices on this calendar, just games). Elise has EFY, Ethan has England AND Nebraska with his theater group, and Jonas has his first week-long Scout camp, so I won't have all four kids in the house at the same time more than a few days at a time until July, which will be kind of strange. Ethan is also starting his first ever summer job, hauling bags of fertilizer and animal feed at Forrest's work for a respectable hourly wage. (His first day is tomorrow. Interested in seeing how it goes!) So even though we're busy, and even though, if I'm honest, a part of me despairs at the electronics-policing and the messy house and the Mom-I'm-bored-what-should-we-do element of summer, overall there's a lot to look forward to. Here are a few things I love about June-August.
1. Sleeping in. Wyatt still wakes up early (in fact, he woke up at 5:57 on the official first day of summer), he's more than happy to watch a few cartoons while I get a little more rest. It is SO nice not to have to drag myself, and a few other members of the household, out of bed at 6:15 a.m. and I love, love, love waking up when my body tells me to instead of my alarm.
2. Exercising outside. I can leave all the kids home and head out on my bike (or on my aforementioned walk/runs), breathe in the summer air, listen to the birds, enjoy a nice audiobook. As a matter of fact, I should just say outside in general. Outside! It's green and vibrant and beautiful here in the summer. I love it.
3. Doing fun stuff with the kiddos. Now that the kids are getting older I don't have the same sway over them as I did a few years back. Ethan and Elise probably aren't all that interested in going to the Como Zoo (although who knows . . . they might be. I should ask. There's a new gorilla exhibit.) But we'll have a few fun weekends together as a family, and my Mom and Dad are coming in August and we'll head to Cragun's as well as the State Fair. I also like just having a little time to hang out with my kids instead of rush, rush, rushing all the time. Friday afternoon I sat with Wyatt in his room while he read one book after another, and I didn't have anything else to do or anywhere else to go and it was lovely.
4. Writing. I'm going to take off for a few hours a few days a week, leave the kids at home, and go to the library. It will feel good to do more than teach people about writing or grade people's writing but instead create something myself. It's been a few months.
5. Kids outside! (This is different than the me outside discussed in #2.) Wyatt has good friends on either side of us and our backyards are like their own little kingdom. It's wonderful. He and the three girls on one side and the two boys on the other play basketball, have sword fights and water fights, and generally exhaust themselves whenever the weather permits. And by some stroke of luck and good fortune, all three families have this tacit "outside only" playing policy, so none of these kids ask to come inside anyone else's house and eat food and play Wii and mess up the living room. Nope--all outside, all the time. It is a true tender mercy. I am not kidding. I thought I wouldn't like the fenceless backyards of Minnesota when I moved here long ago, but I've learned to appreciate how much they foster outside play for kids. I also like taking the kids to the pool, and watching them play sports, and seeing Elise take her iPhone and go for a nice long walk on the paths around the neighborhood. Everybody feels better when the kids get outside. And speaking of sports, here's a cute picture of Jonas and his good friend James (a kid in the ward who I'm SO GLAD joined the soccer team because his mom is awesome and we share car pooling duties, which is another tender mercy). I include the picture just because everyone likes pictures and it's the only one I have right now:
6. Not working, but looking forward to working again. Having summers off is a wonderful thing. Everyone should do it. It's so nice to have the freedom and flexibility that not working provides, but I also really like looking forward to teaching again in the fall. I can throw myself into housewifery more fully when I know that, come fall, I'll be busy with other things. When I think that the only thing I have on my to-do list into the foreseeable future is cleaning and other captain-of-the-household style duties, then it's really easy to put it off. But when I know I have this window of time, and then when I go back to work I can start ignoring certain things again? That's when I get motivated.
So far this summer I've already cleaned out my closet; sorted, reorganized and donated all the old clothes that have been piling up in the basement; FINALLY taken the patches from Utah off of Jonas's Scout shirt (he was wearing Ethan's hand-me-down) and applied the appropriate badges and whatnot as well as located all of Ethan's merit badges to make sure we have them all for his sash (and wonder of wonders, I haven't lost a SINGLE PATCH even though I haven't sewn any on for at least three years); taken all four kids to the dentist, Ethan to the eye doctor, Jonas to have his physical (it came to my attention that the child had not had a physical since we moved to Minnesota, but it appears all his body parts are in working order, so whew!), and scheduled an appointment for Forrest to see a dermatologist because he has the type of skin that needs a dermatological once over. I also went to the dentist, even though I hate it. Congratulations to me! I'm also weirdly excited about revamping my syllabus for next semester since now I know what worked and what didn't. I really like retooling syllabi. I don't quilt, but I imagine there's that same sense of satisfaction that comes when you put different parts together to create a satisfying, useful, kind of beautiful whole. Difference is when you give someone a quilt they say, "Oh wow! This is wonderful! Thank you so much!" But when you give a kid a syllabus he skims it, groans a little, then stuffs it unceremoniously in his binder.
7. Housework that I don't have to do. Yes, it's true that the house doesn't stay clean during the daytime hours like it does when the kids are in school. But I can delegate a whole lot more to them as well. Also, I rarely have to WASH, SORT, MATCH or LOCATE socks. I apologize for the all caps, but I feel strongly about this. During the wintertime, the sock situation is almost as distressing as the lack of sunlight and frigid temperatures. But during the summer? Flip-flops, baby. Love it.
8. Summer movies. Even if some of them are a little cheesy, I like going to the movies with the family and this is the season to do it.
9. No homework! No checking Infinite Campus (the online gradebook our district uses)! No last minute projects! No "what-did-you-get-on-that-test?" stress! No "Mom-will-you-help-me-write-all-the-rules-about-MLA-format-you-can-fit-on-a-single-notecard-for-my-final-tomorrow-morning!" No backpacks to rifle through, daily planners to sign, school lunches to pay for, grade-related emotional breakdowns to navigate, lost library books to locate, parent teacher conferences to attend, or emails from the district, the school, or the teachers to skim and then delete.
10. So You Think You Can Dance. Even after all these years, I'm still a SYTYCD fan. I hope they don't cancel it anytime soon because it's the only show I watch in the summer and a girl's got to have SOMETHING to fold her laundry to. Even if there are relatively few socks to contend with.
And that's it for now. I could go on, but 10 is the number you shoot for when making a list on a blog. Oh, but there's one more thing!
11. Honeycrisp apples. Real ones, not those impostors they try to foist on you during the winter. This is a late summer thing, but they're worth looking forward to.
Oh, and unrelated but cool: Elder Holland is coming to our Stake Conference on Sunday! We heard that a GA was coming and I was keeping my fingers crossed for Holland or Uchtdorf (of course), but figured either of the two would be a very long shot. But hey! Elder Holland! It's going to be very cool to listen to him in person. Although the scuttlebut is that other stakes around the area have heard he's coming and are planning to drive for hours to converge on our stake conference and take our seats. Doors open at 8, seat saving not allowed. Friends of ours are thinking of going two hours early to get in line, like it's Black Friday or something. We'll see how the Hallstroms decide to handle it. I'll report back next week.
