Summer Activity Short List

I had set a goal for myself to write on this blog a little bit more in 2018.  Even though there isn't a book service that fully supports "blog slurping" anymore, I still want to write and manually create books.  2017 only saw 25 posts!  Only 25 posts to talk about our amazing and crazy year last year.  It also seems, unfortunately, unless I get my act together that 2018 will be the same, and they will all be sad, funeral posts.

Most of my writing these days is short blurbs on instagram.  Thank heavens for instagram and chat books documenting our day to day lives.  Hopefully, for the rest of the year, the little bit of it that is left, I can get a little bit of writing in. 

So many goals, so little time.

We had such a good summer.  I realize I'm only speaking for myself, but it was pretty good.  The big boys started back to school today - Elliott in 6th grade and Wyatt in 4th.  Quinn starts Kindergarten next week.  For one year only, all three of my boys will be at the same school.  They are growing up so fast and I love it.  It feels like I am such a better mom to bigger kids than little ones.  Though I did love those three fat babies, I love loud and obnoxious kids and tweeners better.

The summer of 2018 was the first time since the boys started school that we had a "full" summer, June - August.  Last year it was truncated because of the switch from year-round to traditional school and all the years before that it was only 3 weeks in July.

I thought it would be fun to sit down and make a short list of all the things we did this summer.  I'm sure that I'll be leaving stuff out, but here are the things I can remember.

*Bowling, 2 times
*Road trip to Preston, Idaho to find Napoleon and Pedro's houses
*City Cemetery to find all the LDS Prophets headstones
*Temple Square and the Church history museum
*Disney store and lunch at City Creek
*Zoo, 2 times
*Silver Lake
*Mini golf
*We saw every single kid movie that was released this summer!
*Backyard camp out
*Overnighter to the Homestead
*Swimming
*Lagoon
*SEVEN soccer tournaments between Elliott and Wyatt
*Soccer practice all summer for all three boys
*Lots of eating out for lunch
*Video games
*Red Butte Gardens
*Bake cookies a couple of times
*Building with marshmallows and toothpicks
*Flew to Phoenix
*Grand Canyon
*Played lots of FIFA on the x-box
*Watched all of World Cup Soccer
*Wyatt and Quinn each had a day of puking from heat exhaustion and dehydration.
*Played with friends a couple of times
*Watched fireworks
*Pretzel Bites
*Read a lot of books
*Splash pads
*Grandma Camps
*Monarchs soccer games

The boys stayed up way too late and slept in even later all summer.  Quinn set the record for 11:15 am on a Sunday in July.  Church was at 11 and he and Ross went late (the big boys went on time, on their own because I was out of town).  Wyatt isn't much for sleeping in, but even he had a couple late mornings, sleeping until around 8:30 or 9:00 am.

Parts of summer were really hard for me.  Mostly, I kept it together with a goal of not yelling or getting too mad over the summer.  Being a mom who is an introvert is hard for me.  My boys are so social, and I am so anti-social, it's hard to find a good balance.  But, yesterday I asked the boys as we were picking out clothes for the first day of school what was something about my "momming" that bugged them and something that they liked.

Quinn had nothing to say.  Wyatt doesn't like it when I grab his arm and make him sit up on the couch, but didn't have anything nice to say.  Elliott said he things I'm a pretty good mom and likes it when I tell him the plan.

I guess that means that I'm doing okay these days, in spite of the fact that I think most days, I suck at everything.

Back to school.

Back to growing up.

It always feels like we wait all year for summer to come and then it's gone in the blink of an eye.  As of today, summer is officially over and I'm already starting to count down until next summer.  But, don't get me wrong, I am completely happy to wait...and have a couple of hours to myself everyday.  Hours that will be completely silent, except for maybe a little Vance Joy on Pandora Radio.