The Last Hurrah!

Well, this is it. We have almost completely survived the first week of school! It actually went pretty well. Traffic has been crazy with new school start times, but it's dying down now that people are getting used to it. The kids seems to enjoy their classes and their teachers. I haven't gotten any calls from the office at all!

I meant to post on Monday about our last adventures of the summer, but I don't know how I actually thought that was going to work. I'm back to regularly scheduled programming here at work myself, and for me that means training new students. Most of this week, I've been out at the front desk going over procedures in triplicate (we have three newcomers) instead of spending any time at my desk.

We usually try to have one last day together before school starts where we can do something fun to celebrate the end of summer. This year, Ken had to work on Sunday, and I had a retreat to attend, so we made our plans for Saturday. And when I say "made plans" I mean, we had no idea what we were going to do until about 15 minutes before we left the house.

Ben's karate camp had been going to a park called Riven Rock once a week to play in the water. It sounded like he'd enjoyed it and the rest of us hadn't really been there, so we decided to try it out. I got out the cooler and literally threw odds and ends in there: half a pack of crackers, two packages of cheese, some lunch meat, a small watermelon, some dried cranberries, a few cucumbers, etc.

The kids got dressed in swimsuits and packed a change of clothes and we headed out. The park was farther away than I expected, but it was a nice drive. Ben directed us to the right shelter and the kids headed out to the water. It was colder than they had expected, but after a few tentative toe touches, they did get in and play.

There were some nice rocks I could sit on to watch and they had a good time while the sun was out. Once the clouds hit, we took a break to eat some lunch and then they went back out. They were more tentative this time because the sun was still hiding. They also started "fun" sword fighting with some huge sticks they found which quickly devolved into yelling and we decided it was time to leave.

 

(Henry couldn't skip rocks, so he skipped himself)

On the way home they asked if we could go to the pool, and we decided we might as well, so as soon as we got home we unpacked the cooler and walked over to the pool. We stayed there long enough to get hungry for dinner and then headed home for the night. It was a nice day together, and everyone was appropriately tired that night!