First Day of Summer School

Today was the first day of summer school for S2. With his personality, he just goes with the flow and will make the best of it, I am sure. He needs an extra boost in reading so between this for a few weeks and the library, we are hoping to have him loving reading and flourishing. I figure as long as he has books he is interested in this summer, we’ll do fine.

Summer school is like a cruel joke, I think. All year you survive for summer and it just seems wrong to then go show back up to school. And it’s odd to be there.

But for all of you out there, it provides lots of new stories of trips to school…

You know, one day when my kids are grown, I am sure I will just be some boring blonde that no one will want to read about anymore. Until that day ever arrives, I hope to keep you laughing…and letting you all know that you are not insane, there are others just as crazy as you out there!

To start our morning, we overslept.

One of the boys, I’m sure, got to playing with my alarm clock and set it at the wrong time. I have no idea how long it was like that, I haven’t had to use it for two weeks now…two blissful weeks.

So, when I let the dog out in the morning (my back up alarm clock), I seen the alarm clock said five so I snuggled down into my warm bed and felt the cold touch my nose and heard the rain on the window and went blissfully back to sleep for an hour.

I awoke to my back up cell phone alarm. Ending. The sound of the alarm ending woke me up. It takes an hour for it to turn itself off. We had one hour before school BEGAN and it was an all out hustle to get ready then. I had to take a shower because we had canned all day the day before and used up all the hot water so I my whole self was screaming “shower!”. When I was done, I had to holler to the boys to wake up. And then holler again. And then again. And then I had to run up the stairs to holler right in their rooms. And then right over their beds. S4 woke up crying, “You scare me! Is it snowing?”

Snowing? In June? Yup, summer school just messes with you that way.

So we really scrambled to get out the door on time. I had S4 in his Lightening Jammies AND his Lightening shoes so we should have no problems at all. I told the other three I would make them breakfast when we got home and I made instant oatmeal for S2. When it was time to go, I found S2, S3 and S4 all huddled under an umbrella looking in the sand box for S2’s shoes. We were so not prepared for the day!

We made it to school, thru the dirt road detour with ten minutes to spare. Hooray! We had made it without a hitch (sorta). We headed out of the heated suburban (it was that cold out! No wonder S4 thought it was snowing!) into the rain for the school door.

Honestly, it was hardly raining. Like, I wasn’t even worried my mascara would run. But S1 (who owns the umbrella), S3 and S4 were all huddled under the umbrella to school.

I would like to say here that all three of these boys run and jump in mud puddles regularly. They stick their heads under the hanging baskets of flowers on my porch when I am watering them. They wade in water with their jeans on. They spray each other with the hose. If there is a only one puddle in a whole parking lot or driveway, my boys find it. But on this day, they are huddled under an umbrella.

It was bound to happen. S4 tripped over S1’s feet and fell on the soaking wet sidewalk, drenching his Lightening McQueen jammies. Not ANY jammies, his LIGHTENING jammies.

Then the flood gates of tears began and I found out that the front doors of the school echo much more than the side doors (that we go in during the regular school year) of the school do.

S4 wailed all the way down the hallway. Two women, who I didn’t recognize, began to speculate that it was just too early for the little guy to be out and about.

We arrived rather announcedly to the class room where S2 was happy to be away from us, and continued back to the suburban where they all tried, again, to huddle under the umbrella. I am calculating in my head the cost of umbrellas down at Family Dollar vs. the headache I know I have over the wailing by the times of rain we are to be getting this week. Umbrellas would be a very wise investment.

So that was our first day of summer school.

It must get better than this!