School’s out!

Good-bye, 4th grade! Adios, 7th grade!

It’s the last day of school in our little corner of the world, and there was much smiling and cavorting this morning in my house. Forget the Queen’s upcoming Jubilee or the Summer Olympics– there’s no celebration in the world that matches the unbridled joy of the last day of school. The entire summer, with all its laziness and promise, awaits.The official countdown has been on for days, of course, with my little darlings and our best-friend/teacher-at-the-jail-school quizzing each other constantly to make sure each one of the gleeful trio knows just how many days of imprisonment were left in the 2012 school year. They do this every year, snickering to themselves as we approach single-digit days left, while I roll my eyes and wonder how I’m going to amuse these monkeys all summer.

This is the first year that I haven’t approached the end of school with a bit of dread. I’m quite happy about that. Usually, I get a little panicky at the idea of 10 weeks of unscheduled sloth. I’m a creature of habit who likes a routine, and summer is anything but structured.

This year, however, I don’t mind the idea of unstructured time. In fact, it’s probably a really good thing — for all of us.

I’ll keep some of the same routines — swallowing my daily dose of Tamoxifen with my cup of coffee, watering plants, going to the gym — while letting the rest of them go. No alarm clocks other than a hungry little piggie requesting breakfast, no lunches to pack, no carpool to drive.

I’ll make my kids groan by insisting they spend a little time every day reading. Macy is finishing up this series, and we’ll soon be on the hunt for the next set of great books. Payton will pretend he’s annoyed by the daily reading time but will soon be swept away by this book or the scuttlebutt about whether there will be another installation in this series. Hopefully I’ll get some reading time in, too, as my list of books to read is long.

We’re kicking off the summer tonight with a celebration of with our sweet friends and their newly minted high school graduate. Corks will be flying and tissues will be passed as we toast this charming young lady who has nothing but great things ahead of her. Tomorrow will be yet another celebration as I turn a year older and celebrate the fact that I’m alive & kicking. It’ll be a total birthday weekend, followed by the first trip of the summer.

We’ll be heading to the Hill Country to enjoy (?) the sights & sounds of Schlitterbahn. My kids have been wanting to do this for years, but being the stick-in-the-mud-amusement-park-hating kind of mom that I am, I’ve always deferred. This year, it’s on! Thanks to some skillful peer pressure exerted by a certain wily trio of suburban at-home moms, my kids will finally get to experience the thrills & chills of this famed waterpark. The crowds! The onslaught of strangers’ kids! The vast bodies of communal water! Oh, joy.

In a couple of weeks my brother and his two kids will be heading to the great state of Texas from the Garden State. We’ll have five days of sun & fun and cousin immersion. What a great way to get the summer started! The day they leave, I leave for my annual trip with the Duke girls. This year we’re going back to Captiva Island, in Florida, for some kid-free R&R.

At some point in the near future we hope to head to Corpus Christi to see our dear friends’ new home. We miss them every day of the week, so getting to see their new house & pool and catch up on some long-overdue visiting will be fun, fun, fun.

Hopefully we’ll be making a return trip to the lovely Tyler, Texas, in July. Tyler is the site of the Texas East Little League All Stars tournament, to which my slugger’s team has earned a trip the last two years. Making it a three-peat would be a great way to close out the Little League experience.

We’ll be taking our annual trip to Salisbury Beach, of course. This trip is eagerly anticipated all year long, and once school ends, the countdown to the beach trip begins in earnest. Escaping the Texas heat and hanging on the beach with our second family is the best part of summer. I’ll be sure to post dispatches from the East Coast on how low the humidity is and how many lobsters we consume, don’t worry.

It’s shaping up to be a great summer.