Summer Fun 2013: The End

With just a few daylight hours until bedtime here on the first school night, summer is definitely waning.  Sure, there's the upcoming Labor Day weekend, and then the day off for Rosh Hashanah, but really, those feel more like fall holidays than summer.

We haven't done anything spectacular here on the last day--some Animal Jam time, some playing outside with friends time, some re-reading Harry Potter time, even piano lessons. Plus we distributed school supplies and packed up backpacks with summer reading and math packets, new pencils and such, and boxes of tissues and bandaids for the teachers.   I asked Bud and Sis what things they might want for school that they don't already have.  Bud said that he wants a get-out-of-school-free card or a sign to wear reading "No Homework Allowed."  I also baked a loaf of no-knead bread, squirreling away the other half of the dough for another time. Now I'm starting the last of the dinner prep; there's the kids favorite "baked" chicken in the slow cooker and I just put the rice in the rice cooker--yes, we eat early, sometime between 5:30-6:00 pm on a regular day.  Sis is having a "play bath" (I'm on the computer upstairs instead of downstairs because I like to be on the same floor when one of them is in the tub; is that silly with them 8 years old?  Maybe it's just an excuse.)  I promised them a little bit of tv when I make the gravy.  And then it'll be last-minute clothes sorting (yay for strict dress code!) and alarm-setting before reading at bedtime (I tried to read them Wildwood, Karen L R, but, still in the throes of HP they were having none of it.)  Mama has PT tonight and will be late, but she'll manage an appearance at bedtime.

We have several things to do after their bedtime--gathering treats in cones as part of our annual Schultute tradition and creating their first-day-of-school poster (always in the first-day-of-school photo.) And I'll confirm breakfast and lunch and snack makings and water bottles, plus write little notes.  I have little signs reminding them what to do to earn their $1-a-day (make bed, put away toothbrush, put away clothes, pick up floor), but I won't burden them with that the first few days (nor the new chore chart with some added responsibilities!)

And then 7 a.m. and the energy of the first day will come pretty early.

I guess after 6 years of first-days-of-school, counting preschool (which I most definitely do), this is getting pretty old-hat.