While we're certainly keeping busy this summer, we're making sure to get tons of "down time", too. For that is what seems to elude us during the school year when we are most certainly bound by the academic and church calendar.
My kids have plenty of organized activities this summer: Summer Academy, VBS, art lessons, swim lessons, and Karate, to name a few. But, we're also doing the lazy thing. Wii and TV are allowed more often, we've been hanging at various pools several times a week where I literally lay there like a bump on a log while my kids play in the water. We hit up the library often, we read, we play cards and backgammon at Kolache, and we overdose on Food Network.
This summer, after having now lived here a year, has found Harper spreading out a bit more, and we've enjoyed having her friends from school over to our place. Our new neighborhood is a bit different from Evanston where the majority of kids would be in day-long camps during this time. And yet here, in our new neighborhood, kids hang in "pockets". My goal? To gather them all up at the park for a good old-fashioned game of kick-ball. Maybe we'll have to make flyers to see who can "come out to play." Zane, too, has been meeting up with a few buddies and has enjoyed feeling "older" as he prepares to enter Kindergarten.
I like the ease of the summer. My kids need the nothingness. I like being unscheduled. It's important.
Take this morning. Zane was scheduled to be in the pool right about now, but seeing as it is too chilly for a swim lesson (my boy's teeth would be chattering within 5 minutes) he's playing Wii Lego Star Wars until we get Harper at Summer Academy. He has waited a FULL YEAR to learn how to play and conquer this game, having sat patiently while watching Harper play it last year. Ok, yes, it's a video game, but he is overjoyed to have mastered it, and for him, it's a milestone of sorts. He'll play, then we'll pick up Harp, and be off to run some errands.
It's not a beautiful day out, so we'll get home and continue working on finishing Harper's room remodel - just doing some rearranging and decluttering. Will probably add another color to wall for an accent. We'll be looking at a Craig's List find tonight, a "new" desk for her, as we are trying to create a place where she can do her homework come fall - rather than using my dining room table.
THIS is summer: wandering with the occasional scheduled gig.
That's how we roll.
I like to call it . . . purposeful laziness.
No pressure.
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