I feel like this week is that final push, up the hill toward the FINISH banner in a race.
When I sat down Friday to check over the family Google Calendar and plan out the week a bit, it… took me a while. Ha. That whole idea of fitting pieces together like a game of Tetris felt very real to me.
The week looks like this……
Ethan:
- final REAL day of school today! They’re having a send-off thing on the playground at the end of the day where the whole school lines up to high five them and wish them well as they leave. Parents are welcome to take photos. It will be quick, but still a disruption in my day… I also need to go buy 2 bags of ice as a donation for an event that’s happening tomorrow and drop those off.
- Soccer practice tonight, a piano lesson + rescheduled soccer game Wednesday evening (45 minutes away…).
- Wednesday there’s a whole day “Amazing Race” event for the 8th graders in lieu of class, and I’m volunteering at that. So I’ll be away from work from like 9-2 at least. I was hoping to fit in most of my work hours early/ late around that so as to not burn more PTO, but we’ll see.
- Thursday and Friday are no school days for Ethan, but his high school summer strength and conditioning class starts already on Thursday, at 7:30 a.m.! Thursday is also his 8th grade graduation in the evening, so my parents are coming, we’ll need to all look nice and be ready by 4:30 pm. and then we have dinner reservations out for after.
- Friday he’s going to a graduation party at a classmate’s house all afternoon (they invited the whole grade).
- Saturday he’s going out all day with a friend to watch his soccer game and then to another graduation party thing, this time a camp-out at this other friend’s house in the country with bonfires, etc.
Asher:
- Asher still has school until next Tuesday, so his week is still fairly normal.
- He has a busy week though with double swim practices (because they didn’t have practice on Memorial Day, he can’t go Thursday due to E’s graduation, etc.). So, his calendar is pretty jam packed with both a.m AND p.m. swim practices today, soccer Tuesday and Friday, a dryland class for swim at 6 a.m. Wednesday, and then of course he will attend Ethan’s graduation with us Thursday night.
- Then he has a swim meet Saturday morning and an out of town soccer game Saturday afternoon.
Oh, and Ivan leaves Saturday for L.A., heading there for a work event all next week… but he’s going a couple days early to see a cousin who lives out there. Fortunately he’s still home this week and can help with some of the running people around!!
The good news is, I think this is the final push. Like I’ve said before, I don’t really believe that things will actually “slow down”- it doesn’t seem that our life really has a slow period. lol.
But, something about NO SCHOOL at least eases up the pressures of some of the scheduling issues. They’ll still both have swim and/or strength & conditioning classes most mornings, but at least we don’t then need to race to school after, etc. And there’s an obviously more relaxed feel to life when they are able to just be around home during the day more. (Or wearing a swimsuit and flip flops. 😉 )
We still need to sort out when Ethan will work this summer. He doesn’t want to work a TON, of course; he wants time to do stuff with friends, relax, etc. Plus he has his activities to schedule around, too. He’s trying to decide if he wants to request more evening shifts, or daytime, or stick with a combo of weekend + week day shifts… He wants some afternoons free to head to the pool with his friends, which I fully support! I think he can work until 9 p.m. in the summer (instead of the 7 p.m. law during school year), so I said maybe he could work like 4-9 p.m. a couple days during the week and then stick with some morning weekend hours like he normally does. We’ll see! Or maybe the ideal thing would be to just sort of rotate his schedule around, so he has some mornings and some afternoons free. AND, of course, he needs to talk to his manager and sort out when they actually need help, too. Maybe they don’t even need him as much during the weekdays when they presumably have some “core staff” that work year-round.
Anyway!! I guess I didn’t even touch on Memorial Day weekend, but I’m about out of time. It was “nice”. Not maybe “amazing”, because both Saturday and Sunday I had to drive Ethan to soccer games 2 hours away. So, doing the math, I drove 8 hours this weekend. BUT, I had a very nice time with Ethan, we got ice cream, and the weather was gorgeous. We just didn’t get the traditional relaxing summer kick-off weekend that some people seemed to have. 😉
Ivan did a bunch of yard work and errands, so he also felt a bit meh about the weekend. LOL. Though, he did get to play soccer games of his own x2 on Sunday, so he was thrilled about that, since that’s his Favorite Thing Ever to do. I also cleaned most of the house yesterday, so that was exciting. hahaha. I did fit in a couple of great workouts and Ivan and I went for a couple walks and we had lunch together, etc. There were fun moments too!
And we did squeeze in a little grill out last night, Monday! We had thin flank steak tacos with beans and avocado and salsa and zucchini.
Daily Gratitude:
I am grateful for the end of school! I personally love the school year routines, but I remember how exciting the “end of school” was growing up, so I’m happy and excited for the boys.
GRATEFUL KAE 
I used to LOVE that end of school feeling as a kid. Even though I worked a lot during the summer (my parents owned a business, so summer meant full time work for me) I still felt so happy about the end of one era of my life. Isn’t it funny how that works though, as each year I had that feeling in June and then in September it was a mix of excitement for the new year and a bit of dread of the summer ending and having to go back to school. I guess as adults (we are adults right?) we have that a little bit with vacation, but it is just not the same as it was when we had those known ending and starting dates each year.
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My mom was a teacher and I LOVED having her home in the summers- it made everything feel extra open and free, because she could take us to the park or out to lunch or the zoo or whatever. I have so many memories too of her just “around”, cleaning out closets or doing “summer projects”, while we just played outside or in the basement, etc… I sometimes REALLY wish that I had a no-summer job, too! But, I wouldn’t want to be a teacher, so….. hahaha. It’s just not the same to work throughout the summer the same way you do all year, although there’s still a different feel in the air, for sure.
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My kids have school until the end of June, but we’re all ready for summer. After a few months of having the kids home and juggling camp routines and ALL THE SAND IN THE WASHING MACHINE I am so, so ready for school to start back up again, but like you said – it is magic as a kid to reach the end of the school year and I do enjoy the more relaxed pace in the mornings and no more packing lunchboxes!!!
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I can’t believe how late your kids go!! And yep, it’s always great when summer starts, and great when summer ends. 😉
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I think school is in session here through June 15-16th? I will start paying attention next year since Paul will be on that academic calendar. I grew up in ND and we were always done the Friday of Memorial Day Weekend!
You guys have a fun week of activities ahead of you so I can see why it took some time to sketch it all out! We had a nice Memorial Day Weekend but I wouldn’t call it relaxing?? But weekends aren’t really “relaxing” at this stage of parenting. But overall we had a good weekend with lots of time outdoors. I think Saturday morning was actually my favorite part – we walked/scooted up to Starbucks which is next to a grocery store. The boys split a donut from the grocery store and I had a latte. Then we walked over to the library, spent some time there and picked out a ton of books – borderline too many as I had trouble fitting them in the bottom storage space of the stroller. And then we walked home. It was a simple morning but really nice.
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That sounds like a WONDERFUL Saturday morning!! I miss those days!! We did so much of that sort of thing when the boys were Paul and WIll’s ages- walking places, going for treats, library, mall walks, etc… it was so fun. 🙂 We also used to spend a LOT of time at Target back then, haha!! (Back then they had $1 popcorn at the cafe, so the boys would sit in the cart and wolf down popcorn while I browsed Target, lol! It was great.)
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Here in our town in New Jersey, school is out on June 16th and I cherish this feeling(and I’m an adult and a teacher in high school!) As summer stretches before us, it is full of possibilities. Opportunities to stay up later, to look for bugs, care for flowers, dig in the sane, set up a tent in the back yard. READ books (my goal). This season between memorial day and the end of school carries its own kind of very special energy!
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Yes!! That sounds awesome. I feel a little sad because my boys are older now and are kind of past wanting to constantly be with me, digging in the yard for bugs, etc. But there are still plenty of other opportunities for summer fun with them- they just look a little different now. 🙂
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Wow! What a crazy schedule. I don’t know how you do it. I have two events abutting against each other on the calendar next weekend and I think I’m going to have to cancel one. LOL. I can’t stand to be busy!
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Yes, having kids, I think it’s kind of a given that we will have more than one thing abutting on the calendar at almost any given moment!! 😉
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omg I get it. And somehow we just ADDED a bunch of sports + activities (summer league stuff!?) – piano, lacrosse, basketball — that is starting BEFORE school actually ends! AHHHH! I wish our school year finished before Memorial Day.
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Oh gosh, I agree, they should wait until school is out at least to fire up the summer activities!! I suppose it’s complicated with schools having different end dates, but still….
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We don’t finish until the end of June but things are ramping up a bit, with sports day, volunteering for the uniform swap, etc.
This is our first real school-aged summer so figuring out how to navigate that will be interesting. I think my son thinks it’s going to be lazy, but really we only have 2/6 weeks at home?
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There always seems to be so much at the end. And I always kind of forget how much effort all of those “end of year” events take. They don’t seem like a lot on the surface, but add them all up and it adds a lot to the calendar.
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I’m intrigued by all these commenters who say school is in session until mid-end of June! School is done here (but then we start again August 10th.) I do love the end of the school year, partially because it eases up my schedule,
and partially like you said, I remember that feeling of excitement that the kids have.
You are a good mom! I would be very cranky if I had to drive four hours round trip (TWICE.) I complain about the driving here sometimes, but it’s never that bad.
I’m guessing Ethan’s school is quite a bit smaller than my daughter’s! She had her eighth grade graduation last week and we counted 360 kids (my son and I counted names in the program to try to keep ourselves sane during the extremely long ceremony.) And… Ethan has a high school strength class that’s starts 7:30 am on Thursday??? That seems a little harsh! He must be really dedicated.
Anyway… good luck with everything. It sounds like a crazy week, but all good things.
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Yes, I am not sure how many kids total they have in their 8th grade- I want to say somewhere around 50 kids??? I think there are 2 homerooms with less than 25 kids each!
And his strength class is at his new high school… which has a slightly different schedule, so they already got out for the year last week. Therefore, the Strength class (which is for 9-12 grades) started up for the rest of the high schoolers/upperclassmen already last week. The incoming freshmen are just sort of jumping in on the first available date, which for them is tomorrow, since it’s their first official day without school!
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You sure are busy with all the boys’ activities, work, and workouts, but I can see how the summer, if only slightly less busy, somehow makes you feel like the pressure is off a little bit.
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Yes, it does- sort of. haha. I think I always think it’s going to feel more relaxing than it ends up being, in part because I often end up playing taxi while also juggling my work, which can be frustrating. It does help now that the boys can bike places, etc independently more than in years past… But they will still need a good amount of rides, driving around, etc.
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Sounds like a busy final push. I agree that when there’s no school things slow down as schedule is less fixed. Our girls finish school next Thursday and they’ll leave daddy to China. So our household will slowdown a lot next weekend. I’ll have a single life for few weeks, for the first time over a decade.
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I think a bit of single life for a few weeks sounds pretty amazing!!! I love my kids to pieces, but a little stretch of time to just do WHATEVER I wanted sounds kinda awesome too.
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Good grief, how on earth do you keep it straight? I do not envy, but… I also know how exciting this time is for graduates (yikes!) and kids who are so eager to get out of school. You are a good mom, embracing the chaos AND the fun. 🙂
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