Saying Goodbye to Summer

It seems to me that around here school starts much earlier than I've ever been accustomed to, which means that we had to do summer wrap-up in the middle of August. Weird. But we did it anyway.

The last week before school always means a few things for us. First of all, it means shifting bedtime and wake-up time to more closely reflect school sleeping schedule. That's a must. Anything else is just asking for trouble.

But more fun than that, the last week before school means relaxing the reigns a bit and doing things we maybe wouldn't normally do, or maybe just doing a few special little things that don't get done as often as we might like.

Here's a look at some fo the ways we spent our last week before school...

PB&J Pizza! One thin, whole weat organic pizza crust, all-natural peanutbutter, and low sugar jelly / jam. Pretty simple stuff. Pretty tasty. Pretty out-of-the-norm for lunch around here. But yummy just the same. (In case you're wondering about cooking instructions - spread a thin layer of PB and top with a moderate layer of jelly. bake according to pizza crust instructions for about 5-6 minutes)

(okay, so this is really not the greatest picture ever, but I thought I should show you the finished product)


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Because we will have so many hours of gymnastics practice each week, at any given time there will be three of us who will need somewhere to go for 2 hours during said practice. Since the library is just around the corner from the gym, we decided library memberships were in order. Our trip to the library prompted a need for a wish list of books to read. So we detoured to Barnes & Noble to browse the children / youth section. We made a list about a mile long! While we were there, the kids each chose to use some of their money they had saved to buy a book. The boys each bought a Zelda book, and Meagan bought a Biscuit the Dog book. I'd say we spent a good 90 minutes in their browsing. I love that the kids thought that was a fun way to spend the day. I love that they want to spend their money on books. All good stuff.

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2 days before school started, we took what might very well be our last real chance of the season to head to the beach park. It was funny to me that the boys took their recently-purchased Zelda books and sat on a piece of playground equipment to read.


Meagan, however, wanted no part of sitting still at a park. She went off on her own and climbed and played. Isaac eventually ended up joining her, but Sebastian read the whole time, only looking up from his book long enough to move to the shade.




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This was maybe one of my most favorite little moments. The last day before school, we made a last-minute shoe shopping trip before gymnastics. When we were done, we still had about an hour before practice, so we got a 'snack' of complete and total junk and headed outside to eat. Because we wouldn't DARE eat that stuff in the van, we sat in the grass beside our van and had a curb-side picnic of sorts. Snack consisted of 7-Up and Airheads for Isaac, 7-Up and a butterfinger for Sebastian and rootbeer and gummy bears for Meagan.

Did you know there are rules for eating gummy bears? I'm not sure I remember them just right, but it's something like this: Red: Eat the heads off first; Green: Squish them before you eat them; Yellow: tear them in half... you get the picture. :)

And this was my own personal contribution to snack time... Mt. Dew and Butterfinger.


Definitely out of the norm for us, and it totally took my kids by surprise that I was actually letting them get something from the check-out line, but it was a fun last-week-of-school thing to do.

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