Summer Time

Mission Trails - A shot from our Memorial Day hike.

I cannot believe that June is here already!! Am I the only one? This year has gone by so fast. I think it's all the kids' activities that we had this year that made the school year fly by. Between band, JROTC, sleepovers, birthday parties, open houses, etc., etc., my days revolve around trying to figure out which kid I'm taking to which activity. A "soccer mom" I am not.

The Oldest child could have gotten her driver's permit back in January but due to the fact that she's been in trouble off and on and she hasn't even asked to get it yet, she hasn't even checked it out at this point. I didn't get my driver's license at 16 either, but we only had one car and my step mom worked all the time. I could have had ten driver's licenses and I still would have been walking everywhere or hitching rides with friends. This isn't the issue at all for the Oldest though. She would have a car to drive to and from school 3-5 days a week if she wanted it. She would certainly have a car to go shopping or drive to work in the evenings should she want to. I'd really like her to get her license just so that she could drive herself to her own appointments. She was in physical therapy for her shoulder, twice a week for about two months. It would have been really nice if she could have driven herself to some of those appointments. For the summer, she's getting a job whether she wants one or not. There are quite a few places in town that she could work that are within walking distance to our house but she'd have a lot more choices open to her with a driver's license.

The Youngest child doesn't have any plans for the summer so far. She's already brown as a berry. She'll probably continue to work on her tan as she hangs out with the neighborhood kids on her vacation.

As a family, we haven't made too many plans. We'll be celebrating the Oldest's 16th birthday in July. We'll be going to Sea World at some point. We also want to get in more hiking this summer. We went over the Memorial Day weekend and had a blast. We're lucky in that one of the staging areas for Mission Trails is about five minutes from our house. We've hiked Mission Trails many times over the years and still have probably about 3/4 of the park we haven't been to yet. We'd also like to do some hiking in the mountains this year too. Honestly, we don't hike as often as I'd like and I can only say that it's because we're too lazy to get out of the house on the weekends.

As for me, I'm job hunting myself and trying to decide what I want to do about school. This last semester was brutal. I read all kinds of Shakespeare and seven modernist novels over the course of eight weeks. That's not to mention the mountains of papers I had to write and projects I had to do. For the summer, I intend to read as much as I can for leisure. Being in class tends to kill any desire to read anything other than the required stuff. I also want to buy a fire pit for the backyard and do some container gardening (hopefully not container killing). The snails have disappeared for anyone that was wondering.

All in all, I'm just looking forward to the leisure days that summer brings. No schedules. I can cook dinner at 8 at night if I want to. I don't have to nag the kids to go to bed. We get to SLEEP IN! One week until summer vacation starts! Woohoo!