Summer Can't Get Here Quick Enough

This post was published last year. I accomplished a lot on my list, but not everything. I haven't made a complete Summer Bucket List this year yet...what's on yours?



May sure is busy this year. This weekend we will be celebrating our sweet and sassy Mathilda's 2nd birthday, and next week Lucy will be graduating from preschool. Bethany & Connor have only 16 days left of 4th and 2nd grade, respectively. And then summer break, the time I look forward to all year, will be upon us at last! 

I can't wait to sleep in. I can't wait to go to the beach. I can't wait to hang out at the park. I can't wait to go swimming...outdoors! I can't wait for day trips and long, lazy play dates and trips up north. I can't wait for freeeeeeedom! Blissful freedom to choose what I want to do with my kids everyday for 3 whole months!

Every summer, it seems, I have grand plans and a long, ambitious list of things I want to do, and I never ever get through the whole list. This year will be no different, I'm sure. Here's this year's agenda, off the top of my head and totally incomplete:

• Spend a week in Port Austin (booked!)
• Go to Roger's City (la hotel de Aunt Donna always has an opening for us, right Aunt Donna?)
• Take the kids to Tahquamenon Falls in the U.P., a place I visited when I was a kid which maybe marks the beginning of my love affair with waterfalls. Also, Chris's grandparents went there for their honeymoon about 70 years ago, how cool is that?!
• Visit family in Grand Rapids, and take the kids to Meijer Gardens while we're there. My mom and I took Bethany & Connor there when they were very little, and it was so much fun - I want Lucy & Mathilda to get to experience it too.
• Make my kids take an entire month off of the television, including video games. I've already been talking this up. I think it's going to be July. I hope they don't cry about it too much, but guess what? They'll get over it!
• Visit family in Midland
• Go back to Chris's dad's cabin
• Go camping
• Go to the Detroit RiverFront and let the kids splash around in the fountains like we did last summer. Preferably, do this more than once.
• Go to Belle Isle, an annual tradition. 
• Go to Mexican Village and eat outside.
• Visit the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, something I have yet to do.
• Visit the DIA (Detroit Institute of Arts), something I haven't done in a couple years.
• Go to Greenfield Village
• Go to the Toledo Zoo
• Read Anne Frank's Diary of a Young Girl with Bethany and then take her to the Holocaust Memorial Center where we can meet actual survivors of the Holocaust
• and...well I could go on, but see what I mean about long and ambitious? I wonder how many of these items I'll get to cross off my list...

I seriously might be more excited than the kids. Truly. My only slight hang up is that I've been leery and ahem, maybe just a bit lazy, about working out since my health scares in November and then again in February. Since I need to be able to keep up with my kids, I really need to get on a walking regime. Starting...well how about tomorrow? Tomorrow is always a good place to start.

Lucy at Belle Isle

Lucy at the beach in Lexington, MI

Connor, Lucy, and Bethany at the beach in Port Austin, MI

Mathilda sleeping at the Port Austin beach

Ocqueoc Falls

The beach in Rogers City

Time and Tide Wait for No Preschooler

This has been a monumental week for my growing babies. First Mathilda turned two, and now Lucy is a preschool graduate.Wow. I wish someone could explain to me the physics of how time moves more quickly once one becomes a parent. Because maybe then I could figure out the secret to slowing it down. That old saying "time and tide wait for no man" is the fabric of my life. Whenever I think, "wow that school year sure flew by," or "Christmas already?" or "I can't believe my baby just turned ___," I always think of this phrase. Sometimes I feel like I'm holding onto a kite string in a wind storm and it's slipping out of my hands uncontrollably. I do my best to embrace change, but I would at times like to hit the slow motion button on the remote control of life.
 
Lucy's last regular day of preschool was Monday, and when she came home she told me she "almost cried". She had a great group of kids in her class, and they're all going off to different schools in the fall and Lucy might never see any of them again. I'm pretty sure she hasn't grasped that yet, but I have and it makes me sad. Those kids have a great group of moms, and I might not see most of them again either. Unfortunately we can't stay in the sweet, simple world of preschool forever. And I have Mathilda's preschool years to look forward to.

I celebrated Lucy's big day by letting Bethany and Connor play hooky from school so they could attend the graduation. Afterward we went to the library and hung out for a couple hours, one of their favorite things to do. And I even bought them lunch at the library's cafe, something they ask for all the time and I always say "no". Lucy fell asleep in the car on the way home. She is still a baby after all. Breathe. Kiss her cheeks. Embrace the moment.

All 3 of my preschool graduates with their teachers

Connor is reliving his happy days of yore

At one point Mathilda disappeared and this is where we found her

Lucy's favorite thing to do at preschool

Bethany loved being chased by a bunch of preschoolers

I repeatedly tried to get a picture of the sisters in the matching dresses, but Mathilda was not having it. In this shot she is pushing Lucy away from her. She only wanted to drive around in the red car without anyone getting in her way.