school's out

well, it's official - summer has begun. pink and buck had 1/2 a day today and brought home great report cards. we've never been high pressure on the scholastic end of things - just want them to do their best and improve, and they both did and got such nice compliments from their teachers. well rounded kids.

pink is in the middle of 'nobody likes me, everybody hates me' - so i guess that means she's ready for middle school, eh? buck has effortless friendships and lots of boys from church in our neighborhood. so far he hasn't hit any snags, so it almost makes it even harder for pink. they include her, but i know she loves frills and girly stuff - so she really misses a friend to do stuff with.

my mom used to stuff me with tons of food at this stage in my life. it helped us bond and we both felt too anesthetized to be sad anymore... it's so tempting to want to distract her with food, spending, shopping or activity instead of sitting with her in the middle of her tears. it seems counter-intuitive to allow her to feel negative feelings. it's almost like we've been programmed to insulate our kids from any of that. i just really wish that it didn't have to be like this - but know that medicating away the pain is what got me where i am. god help me to not be so uncomfortable with her pain that i feel the need to anesthetize us both.

we've only got a week of this before we head out for a two week holiday. we decided that linking both weeks of our family visits together saved us over 8 hours of driving/gas/wear and tear on the "sherman tank". wear and tear on us is going to be a different story. one week in ontario and then a week in pennsylvania (the opposite side to where we lived - scranton area).

the only thing motivating me to ontario is the possibility of seeing erin and connie - erin is a sure thing, connie i've yet to coordinate. staying a week at liam's sister's house is just not my idea of "vacation" - but anything shorter won't allow us to see family and friends. we're taking a day in the middle of that week and heading to the niagara great wolf lodge - so that should be a highlight of the trip. we attended a family reunion at the kalahari in the wisconsin dells a couple of years ago and it was so much fun, the kids still talk about it.

the week after we are headed to the camp my sister and her husband just started working at and the kids will be campers that week. i don't know how far we'll be from deb & jeff - but if liam and i can swing a supper visit i'm going to try.

so life is in full flux, i don't do well in these stages and i've been feeling pretty fragile lately. i'm finally starting to feel the excitement of the trip though and not just the overwhelming amount of work! :) hope your weekend looks bright and shiny!