Throwback Thursday: A repost with added pictures to make it totally random

June 6, 2013 by Kelli

Between end of the year craziness (Yes, we’re still in school because apparently Florida hates children) and a tropical depression that has settled on top of us (it’s like a cruel joke to have to get up and out to school on a day when it’s dark and steadily raining – I think Mother Nature is mad at Florida…probably for hating kids), I just don’t have any decent blog posts in me.

But I have pictures and I have an old blog post that still makes me laugh…and cringe. Pictures first:

Remember when Landon looked like this?

Yesterday I went to his end of the year preschool program where they had those babies in caps and gowns and I almost died from the cute. This is my Landon now:

At one point the preschool director got up and started talking about how we only have 13 years left with these kids at home and how quickly that time will go and I briefly envisioned throwing a shoe at her, but I refrained because that would be inappropriate.

But for real.

To make this post just a little more random and to not tie it together at all, I’m going to leave you with a post that I originally published in October 2010. I wrote this after a rather unfortunate incident that occurred upon cleaning out my minivan.

Not hot.

______________________________________

Saturday night found Lee and I in the minivan, kids in tow, heading out to the mattress store to purchase two new mattresses. Never mind that the kids desperately needed them. Never mind that Tia’s mattress was so cheap that is was literally falling apart and becoming a potential hazard. Never mind that both mattresses had been peed on so many times they could be deemed a health code violation. Never mind any of those things. The fact is simply this:

I went out on Saturday evening to buy mattresses and thought it was fun.

Hi, my name is Kelli and I am a bona fide minivan mom.

Ah, but we haven’t even got to the best part of the story. What? Surely you know there would be more to this story than the fact that I had a hoot buying twin mattresses on a Saturday night, right? A hoot!

It was the incident that occurred when we returned home that sent my world aspinnin’. It started simple. We came home so Lee could drop the kids and I off and return to the mattress store to pick up our most exciting purchases. We had to remove the car seats and fold down the back seats and clean up a bit. And it was during this event that I began to question my entire identity.

The title of my blog is Minivans Are Hot. With the operative word being Hot. I know, I know…Minivan and Hot together in a sentence is an oxymoron. And most days I would beg to differ and would launch into a diatribe about how it’s sexy to be a mom and how minivan moms have it goin’ on and I would work my hardest to convince you that I was right. Until Saturday night…

What I found in the back seat of my minivan was anything but Hot. Let’s start with what I found under the seat, shall we? It was sticky…it was brown…it had flecks of leaves and dirt stuck to it. What was that?!

From there I removed the kids car seats to find enough dried, crumbled food to feed a small pack of wild baboons. It was sealed into the lining of the seat fabric and had to be scraped out with my fingernail. *heave* Don’t even get me started on what I found in their seats.

But the piece de resitance came when I crawled into the way back and looked inside the cup holder. It is here that I gasped, looked at my husband and exclaimed, “Gross! This is why minivans are NOT. HOT.” Then I clutched my chest with the gravity of my statement and fell in dramatic Disney Princess fashion onto the seat, the back of my hand against my forehead…

No I didn’t. That last part didn’t happen – mostly because I wouldn’t want to lay on those seats for $100. Maybe for $1000, though.

In the cup holder sat dried, crusted, molded bread. It appears my children are stock piling food in the back seat of our minivan in the event that a giant meteor should come crashing down to earth and we need to seek shelter inside the car for a significant amount of time. It also appears that they have eaten portions of a sandwich and then shoved the remaining portion in the cup holder and have, every day for who knows how long, been looking at this rotting sandwich and ignoring it.

It’s like I’m raising little cave people!

I promptly dug out the rot and marched to the trash can. My husband, sensing my impending melt down went dashing for the Shop Vac in the basement. Being the super hero that he is, he spent the next half hour sucking the muck out of our minivan while I went inside and lectured my children on the importance of throwing away rotten food. I also tried to talk myself out of changing my blog title from Minivans Are Hot to Minivans Are A Place Where Horrors grow Beneathe the Seats and in the Cupholders While You Yourself Obliviously Drive From Here to There Thinking You Are Looking Fine When Really You Are Controlling a Moving Science Experiment.

But in typical Hero fashion, my man came inside just as I was certain that my entire online identity was going to have to be realtered and yelled “Ta-Da!” I walked outside to see the seats clean (hey look! The fabric’s grey…) The cup holders clean…er. They still have a sticky substance that I can only assume will need to be chisled out at some point (probably just before we decide to sell the car). And it smelled much more pleasant too. It was actually quite nice in there.

I smiled at him and jumped into his arms. Small birds flitted about our heads as he spun me around and when we kissed little animated hearts floated up into the dusky sky.

Alright…that last part didn’t happen either. Sometimes I wish I lived in a cartoon.

Despite the cleanliness of my car, however, I couldn’t shake the fact that I had outwardly acknowledged the un-hotness of my minivan. And so I’m here to retrain my mind. And if any of you are having a hard time believeing that Minivans Are Hot like I am, then why don’t you join in with me as we repeat the mantra over and over.

Minivans are hot, minivans are hot, minivans are hot, minivans are not, minivans are not…

NONONONONO!!!!

Let’s try again.

Minivans are hot, minivans are hot, minivans are hot…

Do you believe it?

Filed Under: blast from the past, Family, Landon, Random Tagged With: Kids, Photos, Repost, Throwback Thursday

Practically the same…

June 4, 2013 by Kelli

It’s my 35th birthday and the day couldn’t be more crazy or indicative of what my life is these days. I have end of school awards, play dates, kindergarten registration (SOB!), laundry, dirty dishes and somewhere in there I think I’ll be allowed to breathe. It’s hectic and crazy and a skooch stressful, but altogether awesome because my life is bustling and full and rich. I wouldn’t change anything about it.

As I sat and thought about turning 35 and remembered back to the day when I thought that was SO OLD, I realized something. 35 and 21 are almost exactly alike! I mean, stand them up side by side and you can hardly tell the difference. To prove my point, I give you:

Ten Ways 35 Is Exactly Like 21

1. You are up at all hours of the night, only at, 35 you’re up involuntarily changing sheets, or doling out medicine or looking for lost lovies and on and on and SWEET MERCY I’M TIRED!

2. You eat Mac and Cheese for lunch. When you were 21 you did it because you were broke. Now you do it because making lunch for yourself takes effort and sooooo tiiiiirrrreeeeddddd…

3. An alcoholic beverage incites a bizarre amount of excitement, again for different reasons.

4. You look at a book and think of all the other fun things you could be doing instead of reading. Only when you were 21 the fun things you thought of involved less sleep, not more sleep.

5. You live in a pigsty and you don’t really care.

6. You have to clean up vomit periodically.

7. When you’re in the car, you crank the tunes. Of course, when you’re 35 the tunes are usually sung by Disney Channel teeny boppers and you turn it just loud enough to drown out the sound of arguing children….

8. You run outside to play in the rain just for the fun of it, only when you come in you now have an entire mountain of laundry to clean instead of just your own soggy clothing.

9. You enjoy a laid back movie night now and again, but instead of that creepy horror movie that allowed you to hide your face in the shoulder of the cute guy next to you, you’re watching a Disney movie with a scary bear in it while small people hide their faces in your shoulder.

10. You have high and lofty dreams of the future, but this time those dreams don’t center around you, but rather around those small people that you helped create….and you dream of a vacation where you’re allowed to do nothing but sleep.

So basically 35 is exactly like 21, only it’s better. Because I sure wouldn’t trade a single thing about where I am or who I’m with.

At 21, life was all about me – my future, my goals, my dreams, my accomplishments. Today I sat on the most uncomfortable chairs known to mankind in a room full of other thirty-five(ish) year olds and I watched my third grader walk up on stage to receive a school accomplishment award and I thought, “Huh. So this is what thirty-five year olds do.”

Afterward I walked out the the courtyard and he ran to me, throwing his long, lanky arms over my shoulders and leaning his head on my shoulder. I kissed the top of his head (because it won’t be long before I won’t be able to reach the top of his head anymore) and I decided 35 is kind of awesome. It’s awesome because of them:

The 21 year old me would have been shocked at this picture.

Heck, the 35 year old me still does a double take when I look at them.

I am blessed.

Thanks for all the birthday wishes everyone! It’s proving to be a good one.

(And if you can think of other ways that 35 is just like 21, share them in the comments. I dare you…)

Filed Under: Family, Kids, Life, Motherhood Tagged With: 35, Birthday, How 35 is just like 21, Life, Motherhood

Better than a t-shirt

June 3, 2013 by Kelli

For years (and by years I seriously mean Y-E-A-R-S) I’ve dropped subtle and not so subtle hints at my longing for a Mac laptop. I’ve casually slipped it into conversation.

“Hey, Babe, dinner will be ready in fifteen minutes. Checked out the new MacBook Air’s lately? Nice, huh?”

It was subtle, simple – understated.

I’ve passed by the Apple store in the mall and sighed longingly, not saying a word. Just sighing. I mean, I could have been thinking anything really, but I secretly hoped the true message would be interpreted correctly.

I’ve held up checks I receive in the mail and proudly declared that “this here $35.00 is going straight into my I-need-a-Mac fund. Now let’s see here, if I pull in $35.00/month, it should take me this long to save all I need. I am on my way, baby!”

I’ve watched one PC die to motherboard failure after just a year and a half and I calmly took over the other PC, which runs loudly and heatedly the second you open her as if she’s screaming for retirement. She was pushing two and a half years, which as we all know is 94 in PC years. I was waiting impatiently for her to kick the bucket so we would be without excuse given that a computer is necessary for me to work and all.

I mean that $35.00 a month isn’t going to earn itself, ya know?!

Lee took the kids out birthday shopping on Saturday. As I have with every other birthday and Christmas for the last four years, I held out a tiny, secret hope that they’d come home with the coveted Mac. But we were headed out to a dinner party that night and the Apple store is a solid 30 minutes drive from the house and by the time they left I knew they wouldn’t have time to drive to Apple and back home.

So I waited patiently for the shirt I was certain they’d buy me and I continued to scheme ways I could gather the funds needed to buy myself a new computer that didn’t sputter and hack each time I fired it up.

They walked in about an hour later, the kids all grins. Sloan held something behind his back and offered up some cock and bull story about all the stores being closed and no present for me and I played along, but inside I was all C’mon, just let me see my new t-shirt.

And then they pulled out a box that said MAC on the side and I had a small heart attack and dug myself out of the chair with a loud “THIS IS SO MUCH BETTER THAN A T-SHIRT!”

Everyone, meet my new computer. Her name is Penelope, but you can call her Penny for short. She very hipster. I feel like I should stock up on trendy glasses now and only drink Venti non-fat, extra-hot, extra-foam, no whip Starbucks lattes. I briefly considered tossing my yoga pants because I fear they would offend Penny, but then I decided, nah. Penny is a progressive and completely modern hipster. She’s totally jive with the yoga pants, but I should probably pair them with a trendy head wrap and a scarf…and possibly a ring on my thumb and pointer finger. I’ll probably throw on a pair of skinny jeans now and then, though. I don’t want to embarrass Penny or anything.

So I’m all Mac now and once you go Mac you never go back right?

Ah, Penny just giggled. I made her laugh…

Now, if Penny could kindly explain all her little gadgety functionability to me, it would be greatly appreciated. There are a couple of buttons I’m afraid to push because, you know, WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?! (I think one of them might control China. I’m not certain, but it seems entirely plausible.)

So I’m off to play around, push buttons (sorry China) and see if I can’t figure this thing out a bit. In the meantime, tell me – do you have a Mac? What is your favorite thing about it? What is the one thing you think I should know as I start to figure this all out?

Filed Under: Lee, Life, Random, writing Tagged With: Going Mac, Hipster gadgets, New computer

Ambition, Inspiration and the Glorious iPhone 5

May 30, 2013 by Kelli

I talked with my friend, Wendy yesterday. Everyone should have a Wendy that they can call…especially if it’s this particular Wendy.

I love conversations with Wendy because every time I hang up the phone I think, “Huh. I never thought of it like that.” Yesterday was no different. Somehow, some way (mostly because Wendy and I share the same brain) we ended up on the topic of ambition and motherhood.

“Women like you and I need inspiration,” Wendy said. “Yes, we are ambitious, but for us to feel successful we need more than ambition, we need to be inspired.”

That may not sound super profound to you, but it was highly enlightening to me. Because it’s absolutely true.

I was created with a brain that longs to be inspired. It’s why I love the arts so very, very much. I need music and nature and poetry and prose and photography and sculptures and landscape and history and travel and an overactive imagination. I need to see these things to feel creative.

I need to create to feel imaginative.

I need to be inspired to be a better mother.

But I had never thought of ambition and inspiration in the way that Wendy described them. If I had to rate my ambition level, I’d put myself in the moderate range. I am ambitious only to the point that I feel capable of success. This last year has been a big eye opener for me in regards to my ability to chase my dreams.

I’ve realized my limits this year and I’ve embraced them, freeing myself up to be inspired – not to be ambitious.

And in so doing, I’ve accomplished more in the last year than ever before.

Sometimes I look at the successful women around me and I find myself wildly frustrated at my own lack of ability to make things happen. There are some women who are so wonderfully geared and suited for ambitious careers and lofty goals, and they can still manage their homes without becoming completely unglued.

I am not one of those women. I get very easily overwhelmed and when I’m overwhelmed, the world around me shuts down. It gets foggy and dark and I find myself on the couch eating Nutella off a spoon while watching reruns of What Not to Wear.

It’s not pretty.

But when I feel inspired, I am able to do so much more and I feel a sense of confidence in those goals and dreams looming before me. I need inspiration to function, not ambition. That is how I’ve been wired and I’m learning to be okay with that.

So what does that have to do with the iPhone 5?

I’m so glad you asked!

I bought one last week. It was an early birthday present to myself and can I just tell you? I’m having wicked fun with this little device. The photography potential of the iPhone is one of the big reasons I wanted one. I love photography. I’m not very good at it, but I love it.

What I especially love about the iPhone is the ability it gives us to looks at the world a little differently. Instead of dashing past a gorgeous spring bloom, we can get up close and inhale the scent. We can snap a picture and manipulate and play with it until that beautiful flower becomes a work of art.

We can create and creating gives way to inspiration

which bolsters confidence

and before you know it the world is an artist’s canvas just waiting to be discovered.

See? I told you everyone needed Wendy they could call.

So tell me – what inspires you?

Filed Under: iPhone, Life, Motherhood, Photography, writing Tagged With: Ambition, Creativity, Inspiration, iPhone 5, Photography

A look back as the countdown looms

May 29, 2013 by Kelli

I am 34 years old. I can only say that for six more days. If anyone tries to say I’m 35 before next Tuesday I will kick him in the shins. Last week Lee said something about how my 36th birthday was coming up. I beat him for it.

The same day my mom sent me a text and said, “Hey, wouldn’t it be fun to do a big spa trip when you turn 40 and I turn 65?” There were a few things wrong with that text – first, I AM ONLY 34! Can we not discuss 40 yet?

Please?

Also, I will only be 38 when she turns 65! *throws hands up in exasperation*

So, yeah. I’m about to officially be in my mid-thirties. An argument could probably be made for the fact that 34 is technically already the mid-thirties, but that’s not a conversation any of us need to have at this point. Because I don’t want to talk about it.

Crystal clear?

Now I can say there are some perks to aging, one of them being the benefit of laughing at pictures of yourself in years past. Enough time has gone by now for old pictures of me to be wildly hysterical, mainly because I grew up in the ’80’s and, you know…it was the ’80’s. So to commemorate me getting old(er), here are a few pictures from ages past and bygone styles.

You’re welcome.

1985: The partial mullet.

1986: The Very Loud Button-Down

1987: Denim on Denim and feathered bangs.

1988: Units belt, High tops with layered socks, Esprit Bag, Side Ponytail. I was ROCKING 5th grade.

1989: I discovered the crimping iron. Thank you, '80's, for so many wonderful and lasting styles.

1989: I discovered the crimping iron. Oh yes I did…

I blame this photo on a number of things: My parents, Jazz Dance and the ’80’s.

1991-ish with remnants of the ’80’s clinging on.

1991: The year of the Coolats, AKA 7th Grade, AKA The year I grew into my nose...

1992: The year of the Coolats (sp?), AKA 7th Grade, AKA The year I grew into my nose…

1995: Calming down a bit in the fashion department. Thankfully for all of us I couldn't find any pictures from 9th, which was a particularly tragic year of fashion for me. Think Sun-In meets short shorts meets way too much make up.

1995: Calming down a bit in the fashion department. Thankfully for all of us I couldn’t find any pictures from 9th grade, which was a particularly tragic year of fashion for me. Think Sun-In meets short shorts meets way too much make up.

I’m also missing several pictures that document those years when I fondly (read: obsessively) wore over-sized flannel shirts. I also had a deep love for overalls my senior year of high school, but then we all did. Don’t act like you didn’t wear them, too…

1999: Rocking the short overalls and a hottie on my arm.

And, of course, there were about 6 years there when I wore babies. I actually miss those years…

My current fashion of choice is yoga pants. I’m kind of kidding and kind of serious. I really love yoga pants. But I don’t want to get completely lost in the hole of my mid-thirties so I try to lose the yoga pants whenever possible and upgrade to something super fashionable…like a skort. And if I’m feeling particularly ambitious, I might even put on a pair of skinny jeans.

But then I spend the day feeling like I’m slowly suffocating to death.

My kids are going to have a field day making fun of me some day…

Here’s to many more years of fashion, both good and bad.

Filed Under: blast from the past, funny stuff that happens, Life, Random Tagged With: '80's pictures, Blast from the past, Fashion, Laughter makes getting old easier

Saying Yes to the Good and Bad

May 28, 2013 by Kelli

I’m learning a lot right now about what it means to say yes. By nature, my first response is not generally yes. I’m more of a “maybe, let me think about it, I’ll get back to you,” kind of a girl. Saying yes is scary because saying yes usually comes with some sort of responsibility attached.

(Unless, of course, someone asks me if I’d like some Nutella, at which point saying yes is non-negotiable and always rewarding…)

Last year Lee and I said “Yes” together to adoption and as most of you know – that didn’t work out so well. But we said yes. We agreed because saying “No” didn’t feel right. If you talk to Lee and I individually about our motives to adopt, you’ll hear two different stories. Mine is the longer one.

Naturally.

Lee’s story is quite simple and I love the purity of his answer. When he was asked last summer why he decided to step forward with the adoption he said, “Because God didn’t give me the freedom to say no.”

That was it.

He couldn’t say no because he didn’t feel like GOD (not me – I had given him full permission to say no) had given him the freedom to say no. So he said yes.

I will confess that I still struggle with some bitterness and disappointment that God didn’t lay “No” on Lee’s heart. I still don’t understand why He brought us to this point in the adoption process. But obviously there were lessons of faith and trust and dependence that I needed to learn and so even though I’m disappointed in the circumstance and sometimes even in God Himself, I can still say He is good.

I still have faith, even though my faith feels much shakier than it did before. It’s being tested and burned and molded – it will come out stronger, but I have to wrestle through this.

As we prayed and sought and searched and looked at what our next step should be after the adoption was terminated, Lee felt a deep desire to go as a family on a mission trip this summer, and this time it was my turn to be reluctant. I didn’t want to go because I didn’t want to spend the money. I knew that money could be spent on transferring our adoption to a different country. But Lee felt really strongly that we should take the kids on a mission trip.

And I didn’t have the freedom to say no, so yes was the only other option.

We began to search different missions opportunities that we could take with the kids. We needed to find something that fit into Lee’s hectic work schedule and after a lot of thought, we decided to join forces with Servant’s Heart Ministry on a mission trip to the Dominican Republic.

One month from today we will board a plane with our children to meet and serve the children of the Dominican Republic. I will confess that my heart is still unsure, not of the trip – I have no doubt the trip will be amazing. But I am still unsure about where we stand with the adoption and I still struggle daily with this idea of saying yes to God.

But what is faith if we don’t say yes to the things that don’t make sense – even those things that may not go as planned? And how will we ever teach our children how to serve those in desperate need if we don’t go and do? Even if it costs money? Even if it sets us back in the adoption?

Or maybe it’s a step forward…

God has been terribly silent through all this adoption stuff, but I have this sense of peace that as we continue to say yes to the things in front of us, He will slowly reveal His plan for our family. As I said earlier, saying yes is scary because the outcome is not always certain, but if there is one thing I have been able to cling to in these months of questioning and doubt it’s that God is good and His plan is perfect, even when I don’t understand it.

So we are saying yes to the things that are scary, the things that are good, the things that could go wrong or right. We’re saying yes because when presented with an opportunity to bless another person, is saying “No” really an option at all?

What about you? What have you said yes to lately?

(And as a PS to those who gave money toward our adoption – please know that we have those donations set aside and we will not touch them until we decide what we are going to do. Should we ultimately decide not to proceed with another adoption, those funds will be returned. I just wanted to offer that explanation in an effort to be fully transparent. We don’t yet feel that God has shut the door on adoption so we continue to save in anticipation of adopting. We are walking in faith making each decision with an enormous sense of trust.)

Filed Under: Adoption, Adoption, faith, Family, Lee, Life, Ministry, Travel Tagged With: faith, Family Mission Trips, Saying Yes, Servant's Heart

French Parenting Vs. American Parenting

May 24, 2013 by Kelli

From the article “Why French Parents Are Superior,” written by Pamela Druckerman originally posted in The Wall Street Journal Online.

“Yet the French have managed to be involved with their families without becoming obsessive. They assume that even good parents aren’t at the constant service of their children, and that there is no need to feel guilty about this. “For me, the evenings are for the parents,” one Parisian mother told me. “My daughter can be with us if she wants, but it’s adult time.” French parents want their kids to be stimulated, but not all the time. While some American toddlers are getting Mandarin tutors and preliteracy training, French kids are—by design—toddling around by themselves.

I’m hardly the first to point out that middle-class America has a parenting problem. This problem has been painstakingly diagnosed, critiqued and named: overparenting, hyperparenting, helicopter parenting, and my personal favorite, the kindergarchy. Nobody seems to like the relentless, unhappy pace of American parenting, least of all parents themselves.”

“Could it be that teaching children how to delay gratification—as middle-class French parents do—actually makes them calmer and more resilient? Might this partly explain why middle-class American kids, who are in general more used to getting what they want right away, so often fall apart under stress?”

“American parents want their kids to be patient, of course. We encourage our kids to share, to wait their turn, to set the table and to practice the piano. But patience isn’t a skill that we hone quite as assiduously as French parents do. We tend to view whether kids are good at waiting as a matter of temperament. In our view, parents either luck out and get a child who waits well or they don’t.”

From “Why French Kids Don’t Have ADHD,” written by Marilyn Wedge, originally published in Psychology Today.

“In the United States, at least 9% of school-aged children have been diagnosed with ADHD, and are taking pharmaceutical medications. In France, the percentage of kids diagnosed and medicated for ADHD is less than .5%. How come the epidemic of ADHD—which has become firmly established in the United States—has almost completely passed over children in France?

Is ADHD a biological-neurological disorder? Surprisingly, the answer to this question depends on whether you live in France or in the United States. In the United States, child psychiatrists consider ADHD to be a biological disorder with biological causes. The preferred treatment is also biological–psycho stimulant medications such as Ritalin and Adderall.

French child psychiatrists, on the other hand, view ADHD as a medical condition that has psycho-social and situational causes. Instead of treating children’s focusing and behavioral problems withdrugs, French doctors prefer to look for the underlying issue that is causing the child distress—not in the child’s brain but in the child’s social context. They then choose to treat the underlying social context problem with psychotherapy or family counseling. This is a very different way of seeing things from the American tendency to attribute all symptoms to a biological dysfunction such as a chemical imbalance in the child’s brain.”

I considered writing a whole post on these articles about how I would tend to agree with the parenting philosophy of the French. They have a lot of things right and I would even argue that children with stricter and more well defined boundaries are probably more enjoyable to be around. But more than me talking too much, I thought it might be more productive for us to have a conversation. So let me know your thoughts! Have you read these articles? What do you think about French parenting vs. American parenting?

Do you think the French are on to something here?

(I’ll go ahead and get the conversation started in the comments.)

Filed Under: discipline, Family, Kids, Motherhood Tagged With: American Parenting, French Parenting, Permissive Parenting, Raising respectful children

Throwback Thursday

May 23, 2013 by Kelli

My brother and I at a costume party circa 1995

You’re welcome.

Come back tomorrow for a little chat about parenting – USA vs. FRANCE.

OOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHH….

And next week is the final week I can claim to be in my early thirties. I have some plans on how to write my way into my mid-thirties. It’s better than drinking my way there, right?

Happy Thursday!

Filed Under: blast from the past, funny stuff that happens, Photography, Random Tagged With: Groovy Costume, I don't know why, Incriminating Photos, Random, Throwback Thursday

No More Pencils, No More Books

May 22, 2013 by Kelli

We had a family movie night last night. When I announced it, the kids were all, “Really?! But it’s a school night!” I know, kids. I know. Why don’t we just play hooky? Let’s just call it a day and finish school now, whatcha think?

I didn’t say that, but I cannot deny thinking it.

My children don’t get out of school until June 7th, which seems like a conspiracy of torture to me. I’m over everything about school and it shows. When the kids get home in the afternoon, our normal routine is a quick snack, then dive straight into homework before any playing.

Our current routine is come home, jump in the pool, play all afternoon and if you get to your homework and reading, yay! Bonus.

We are crawling to the finish line over here.

Every single morning, as I wake Tia up, she rolls over and blinks hard through sleepy, crusty eyes. “Mommy, can’t I skip school just this once?” she cries (sometimes sobs). Friends, I feel like I deserve a medal for not saying YES! Skip it. Let’s stay in bed in our jammies and watch movies all day. Screw school! POWER TO THE PEOPLE!!!

I don’t say any of those things. I put on my Motivating Mom Hat and say super inspiring things like, “Finish strong, honey!” And “Can you taste the victory of your accomplishment?” And “12 More Days – Isn’t It EXCITING?!”

Then I drag her out of bed and force her into clothing. There is some hand clapping involved most mornings. Nature of the beast and all.

This morning the power tripped at 5:00 am, which means our alarm went off, which is honestly the rudest way one could possible be woken up.

(Actually, if you were to talk with my brother, you’d probably find that he has a story of an even ruder awakening. I may, or may not, have woken him up several times as a teenager by standing over his bed and letting loose a blood curdling scream. The memory of the look on his face as he thrashed around on his bed in utter terror gives me unending and eternal glee.)

Anyway, the alarm went off this morning at 5. Mercifully it did not wake up the kids and I was able to doze in and out of sleep. But when 6:30 rolled around, I could not get my brain to communicate to my extremities that it was time to get up. My brain kept sending them messages and my body was like, “Can’t we skip school just this once?”

12 More days until we’re done with all this – isn’t it exciting?! Finish strong! Can you taste the victory of your accomplishment?

Then I told myself to shut up…

12 more days until I can burn the agendas and the reading logs and…well, I probably shouldn’t burn the uniforms since we’ll need them again, but everything else is fair game! I have plans for the summer to keep the kids reading (plans that include paying them – incentive? bribery? Either way, I’m hoping it will motivate) and I have workbooks lined up for math and writing and Russian. But there will be no set agenda.

And there will be strictly enforced rules not to wake me up before 7:00 on any given morning lest they should face the wrath of schedule-free, summertime Mommy. Amen?