Catching Our Breath

This week, N is officially on summer vacation.  Preschool graduation was last Wednesday, and her last day of school was Friday.  The dress rehearsal for her dance recital was last Thursday night, and dance recital day was Sunday.  In less exciting news, M was flat on his back sick Wednesday evening through Saturday morning with a high fever and excruciating pressure in his head and ears.  Little C caught the cold too, but didn't seem to suffer quite as badly with it (thankfully).  My poor lovies.  Nothing makes me appreciate my husband more than the times when he isn't able to do all of the wonderful helpful things he does for our family on a daily basis.

And so last week brought many exciting times and some exhausting times as well.  At the end of the week, I got these beautiful roses from M

just as a "thanks for all the hard work you're doing".  Pretty great.  He sure knows how to bring a tear to a girl's eye!

So this week, it feels like bliss to have NOWHERE to go.  We can linger over breakfast and the older girls can indulge in their make-believe games or we can break out the crayons for a few minutes before anybody gets dressed.  We can up and go to the playground or the library whenever we want to.  We don't have to structure our days around school pickups and drop-offs.  We don't have evening activities or end-of-the-year events going on.  Yes.  Bliss.  We can breathe for a little bit.

This week, it's bliss.  But I can see how all of this freedom may start to get old after a while.  My experience with past summers is that it's nice to take a break from the structure for a little while... but going unstructured too long leads to boredom and squabbling.  And so we made our "summer schedule" bulletin board:

It's quite simple, really... just the days of the week and some drawings of the activities we'll do in the mornings before we come home for lunch and naps.  (This week: Monday = playground day, Tuesday = shopping day, Wednesday = doctor for N and birthday cupcakes with our friend Stella, Thursday = kiddie pool and sprinkler, Friday = library day.)  I'm thinking we'll sit down at the beginning of the week and arrange our activities.  We may keep them constant (i.e. Monday may always be playground day) or we might change them around, subtracting or adding things based on the weather or one-time events we may have going on.  Anyway, I'm hoping this little bit of structure will keep summer boredom and the "what are we going to do today" question at bay.

I'm hoping that more regular blogging will sneak its way into this "summer schedule" of ours, now that things have calmed down a bit.  I've missed it!

To close, a few pictures of these beautiful babies of mine...

L helps Mommy with some conrbread

C in the car on the way to the dance recital (taken by Grandpa)

Our beautiful dancer

Oh, did I mention that after my Dad's 60th birthday party, my immediate family stayed the weekend?  It was a glorious time with an awesome bunch of folks, and it's so very cool that we now have the space to host them all!  I came across these pictures of our Memorial Day breakfast and had to post them.

I am blessed in my family!  Come again soon!