11 weeks of summer holidays?

Our youngest son came home with all these awards
yesterday (they were given in class and parents weren't
invited). Looking them over it seems I know my son fairly
well: creative and sporty. Even creativity in maths!

Yesterday school finished for our younger two boys. Now we face 11 weeks of school holidays. Yes. America has a crazy system! CAJ is locked into a similar schedule that the other schools in our region have. If they want to give the students opportunities like interschool sport, music, drama, debating etc, they need to keep somewhat in-step.

What are we going to do? Aside from going away for 16 days in July, it's not a very exciting summer, at least for three of us.

CAJ has three weeks of various "summer school" classes starting a week from Monday. Our two remaining school students will do a couple of "classes" each (art, wrestling, algebra, and computer programming). And David's teaching the algebra class. These classes are only one or two hours a day.

Two of our boys are going away to summer camps. Our eldest is also a leader (or "counselor" as they're called by Americans) on three summer camps for elementary and middle school kids (including his brother).

Early August David and I are also going away for a couple of nights on our own as an early 20th anniversary celebration.

My various jobs continue, but the pace of life at home is less hectic. Plus a husband around during the day who organises things like lunch and helps out in many other ways. Minus school-related things I'm involved in like prayer meeting and going to sports events. And minus homework and assignments to be concerned about in the evenings. So the pace is slower and the mornings later. Nice.

It does mean, though, that I get less time on my own and have to work with people in my "office" (actually just a corner of the dining room). Which has its own stresses, especially when it's hot enough to put the air con on. We only have air con in the main living area (kitchen-lounge-dining). So that means little breathing space for anyone.

But it's way less stressful than when the boys were little. We still need to get them out, boot them out sometimes (tiny backyards aren't ideal with boys), but they're not as difficult to manage as when they were younger. I used to particularly hate this coming week, when the boys were home and David still at work. I'm aware I'm privileged to be married to a teacher because I really did find "single-parenting" all the boys when they were younger very stressful.

I'm going to try to enjoy this uneventful summer. Because it will be at least three years before I get another. Next year we'll be moving to Australia and the year after we'll be moving back. Stressful times. This summer is a cake walk compared to that.