Adventures in Stay-Cationing

Summer is here! School is out. Temperatures are rising. Grass is growing. And kids need something to do all summer while mom and dad work! We are fortunate to live in an area that provides a variety of summer camps for kids. I have taken advantage of these in the past, and that's the plan again this summer. I even have a brightly colored spreadsheet with all the camps on it to help keep me organized.

Of course, all good plans have their flaws and in this case, I was a few options short in filling the entire summer. Normally my parents can pinch hit for me for a week or two, but that's not an option this year. Since we didn't have any other vacation plans, Ken and I scheduled a week of vacation to cover two of the weeks we needed care.

Last week was our first week of vacation. The kids had just gotten out of school, so they were excited to have a week off, even with no plans. We did end up out of town for a few days for Ken's grandmother's funeral, but otherwise we stayed around town and enjoyed all the benefits of a Stay-cation.

First, I had the kids make a chart with me. They each offered up one chore they were willing to work on during the week and also listed one fun item they wanted to do. Frances offered to clean off her dresser and asked to go to the Children's Museum. Henry offered to clean up the toy bins and asked to go to the pool. Benjamin went along with whatever Henry said (big surprise) and I said I wanted to clean the basement and go geo-caching. It's funny how it all worked out.

Firstly, since I had "clean out the basement" on my list, I had the sudden urge to catch up on laundry and mow the grass. There's probably some psychological reason for why that happens, but it is what it is. I got quite a bit of laundry done and had a lovely adventure mowing the grass.

The grass was quite tall since I hadn't been able to mow it while my wrist was hurt. I got through all of the front yard, all of the side yard and most of the backyard before the adventure started. That's when I mowed a snake in half. We are used to garden snakes in our yard, but I've always assumed that the very loud roaring of the mower will keep them out of my way. I was just taking the bag off when I saw the front half of him slithering away. I started crying and ran to the house to get Ken. I felt horrible and wanted him to come put this creature of of its misery, but my the time I got back, we couldn't find the poor thing. Ken assures me that he will be just fine and that his tail will regrow. Please do not tell me any differently.

Just after the snake incident, I restarted the mower and turned my music back on. There was a fun bass beat to my music, that turned out to be really loud thunder! I was mad because I was really close to finishing, so I tried to hurry up and get as much done as possible. That's when the sky opened up and drenched me. There was no safe way to push a mower up a wet hill, so I gave up. I was putting the mower back in the garage when our canopy in the front yard blew over and landed in the driveway. Ken and I just stood and looked at it for a minute before we decided we should probably take it down.

It was still raining quite hard and I had no idea how to disassemble the thing. Add to that the fact that I was laughing hysterically and we had a bit of trouble. We managed to get it all condensed and into the garage and then we ran up to the house. We were both soaked through completely and had to race to the bathroom so as not to drip all over the floor. We grabbed a quick shower to warm up and then got dressed again, only to look out the window and see bright sunshine outside.

And for the record, Ken never did tell me if he likes piña coladas. And this was all just the first Saturday of vacation!! I'll have to save the rest of our adventures for another post!