All Good Things...

All good things must come to an end, and that includes this summer. I'll be honest, I was prepared for this summer to be kinda meh. I figured the pool would be tough with two kids. We didn't have our traditional beach trip with the neighbors planned. I thought battling boredom, tv obsessions and non-stop snack whining would be in the cards for sure.

But I've been pleasantly surprised to be proven wrong. The summer has been great! And now it's almost over.

On Thursday I leave the kids with Matt and head to a... Bible study weekend? Spiritual retreat? Cult gathering? To be honest, I'm not exactly sure what I'm in for, other than I can't bring a cell phone. Or a watch. No technology of any kind is allowed. I'm terrified looking forward to being unplugged from it all for three days.

And when I get back, that's it. Bye bye summer. Annie starts daycare and I head back to the "office". I'm going to try to get my classroom ready in the three days before preplanning starts that Thursday. (Cue husband rolling eyes at the fact that I use unpaid time to get things ready. But the amount of meetings and things we have on the schedule before the kids show up really doesn't give much choice.)

So to make myself feel better about the end of summer, I thought I'd go through and list the accomplishments and activities we enjoyed these last eight weeks. Here goes!

Books read: 12 (I know, that seems like a lot even for me! I got in some trashy romance set in the Scottish Highlands, a couple detective novels set in a pre-astroid apocolyptic world, some John Green soon-to-be-a-movie YA, Amazon's Book of the Year, amongst others.)

Vacations taken: 2 (although with a stop at the beach and the Great Wolf Lodge, I almost want to count this one trip as two vacations).

Day camps for Violet: 2 (Definitely looking to increase this next year! Camps have been a blast!)

Sleepovers for Violet: 2

Times Annie peed on potty: 2

Vegetables harvested from garden: 3 peppers, 6 and counting cucumbers, lots 'o cherry tomatoes, basil out our ears

Baseball games attended: 0 (This one makes me sad.)

Number of school ideas pinned to Pinterest: 0 (Seriously, I try to really take time off in the summer. Plus Pinterest has started to stress me out.)

Miscellaneous accomplishments: got new glasses, finished my Invisalign braces, bought a new Kindle after mine died, converted Annie's crib (not sure this should be listed as "accomplishment"), rearranged playroom

And there you have it! Not a bad summer, if I say so myself. It's been so nice to get up in the morning without having to jump immediately into the shower and onto the day. I've actually had time to think about things and not make snap decisions, time to consider and mull things over. What a luxury! I'm trying to hold onto this feeling, soak it in while it lasts, before works takes over everything again. We have a couple last playdates, I'm sure there's at least one more trip to the pool in our future, we're goign to keep this one good to the last drop.