School Year Resolutions

I made a vow to myself that I would not let going back to work be the death of fun, even if that meant working a little harder during the week.  I call this one of my "School Year Resolutions".  I remember reading a piece by Robert Fulghum (awww, remember him?) when I was in college about how the school year is really like a second new year for many people.  That idea really resonated with me as I'd always felt the same.  So I try to make "School Year Resolutions" each year.  

Working full time sometimes means weekends are fun-filled with laundry, housecleaning, bill paying, and other indoor sports (Did anyone else love the Judy Blume book Starring Sally J. Freedman As Herself?  Because I think that's where I got the phrase "And other indoor sports").  I promised myself this year that the weekend could be about other things too.

Well, I really lived up to my promise this weekend. In fact, I may have overlived up, if that's a thing.  Friday night Dan announced that he wanted to take the kids to the State Fair.  They had never been and neither had I.  He doesn't often make announcemnents like this, as he is much more "Go with the flow of whatever plans I have in store", so I try to be obliging when he does.  After grocery shopping and dinner, we didn't get on the road for the hour drive until about 6:30.  But we stayed until almost midnight and had a great time.

The next morning we slept in a bit.  I wanted to hit the Famer's Market.  I like everything about the Farmer's Market except that they open so early in the morning.  We didn't get there until 10:30, but that left us and hour and a half to shop, which was plenty of time.

We came home and everybody pitched in with the house cleaning.  Not fun, but necessary.  I got the laundry started and mostly finished.  The girl is helping out a lot with the laundry these days and it is wonderful!  I can only imagine this was how my mother felt when I started doing the dishes every evening.  It was good we got those things done because the next day....

Our kids had a kick-off event for the new STREAM (science, technology, religion, engineering, arts, and math) program at their school.  They were supposed to design a body for the chassis of a muscle cart.  Of course, parent volunteers were needed...

I told my husband this was right up his alley.  He is the race nut of the family.  Of course, it was very humid and rainy when we began building the cars, but by the time they were ready to race, it had cleared off and was beautiful...

...which was a good thing because later that afternoon we went to see my brother play at a nearby winery.  The weather was like fall that afternoon instead of a miserable August day.

We got home at about 9:00 which was plenty of time to get the kids situated and in bed on time.  But I did end up staying up later than I wanted to because of packing lunches and doing a few stray dishes. Unfortunately, one of my other resolutions for the new school year was to get to bed earlier.  Why do my resolutions always have to conflict with each other?  

Overall, I'm glad we had a full weekend because it's been nice to think back on it during this work week.  But maybe next weekend doesn't have to be quite as full as this one was.


Kim