Summer Plans

The boys have been home for a week and a half now.

And we’re all still alive.

Mostly due to my new punishment technique of making them hug one another for 5 solid minutes whenever they are fighting.

They’ve been hugging one another almost non stop.

Occasionally of their own accord.

I initially had them holding hands but turns out that leaves one hand free for smacking your brother upside the head. So I switched to making them put both arms around each other.

I have no idea if it will stop the fighting in the long run but shouting “That’s it! Hug one another NOW!!” is mildly humorous and I’ll take what I can get.

We have the pool set up and filled and chemicalled

The boys are in it every day.

We’re going to the library every Friday. We didn’t sign up for either of the reading programs, though we might. They have been checking out non-fiction books about football. Problem is in two weeks that have gone through the entire juvenile non-fiction section on football. I suggested moving on to biographies of football players but they are not interested. Havoc switched to the regular non-fiction section & found 3 big books. Mayhem stacked up the remaining ones in juvenile. He doesn’t have the reading patience for the thick books like Havoc. I’m hoping to find some fiction stories about football players at his age level – elementary to middle school. Any suggestions?

I need some reading suggestions as well. I have yet to pick my summer genre. I did Regency romance last year, and modern mystery the year before that and historic mystery the year before that. I’m thinking either chick lit or Tudor fiction. I’ve read all the Shopaholic series except the last one and most of her other stuff. Any suggestions for titles like that?

We’re staying here this summer, not heading up to my hometown in July like usual. We’re trying to save money and the county parks & rec dept is offering discount tickets to two ‘local’ amusement parks (one is about 90 minutes away and the other is more like 2.5) so we thought we might do a day trip to one of the parks instead of 4 days in Wheeling. Both boys are now tall enough to ride all the rides & I’ve been waiting for this for a long time. I LOVE amusement parks & am so hoping that with some Dramamine I can ride the coasters again.

The other thing I am doing this summer is Oh Life. I’d signed up for it back in January but after about a week I stopped doing it. They send you an email every evening and you send a response back with how your day went. It’s all private & secure. You can log in and see your responses but no one else can. They include random older responses in the email so you can see what you wrote last week or 96 days ago or whatever. I’ve been pretty good about responding every day with funny things the boys say & what we did that day etc

I also add one thing I am grateful for that day. Life has sort of sucked in a minor daily bothering sort of way for the past few months & feel like I need to remind myself about the good stuff.

I’m looking forward to starting Rinda’s summer photo scavenger hunt in a few days.

There is an outside chance, very outside, like outside, across the field, over the hill and hike another mile sort of chance, that my internet tower might get re-erected. Or perhaps some sort of swiveling 80 foot monopole. Various schemes have been mooted.

We’ll see how it goes.

How is your summer coming along? What sort of plans do you have for it?

Be Sociable, Share!

•