Checking in at the half-way point

I am sitting in bed organizing the family social calendar - something I've been a little lax with the past few weeks.  As I am doing that, I am starting to realize just how quickly the summer is passing by and how rapidly the new school year is approaching.  We have bus orientation and a kindergarten assessment coming up in the next couple of weeks and the new school year is just over five weeks away.

Wow!!!  Five weeks.  Just five weeks until I put my baby girl, my youngest, on the school bus for the first time.  Just five weeks until she starts kindergarten.  As I talked about in 'Miracles', there was a time in my life when I was not sure we would celebrate this milestone with her.  And now it is only 37 days away.  

In early June, I compared the summer to a marathon (you can read the blog post here).  I said "... it's a long event (according to Phineas and Ferb "there's a 104 days of summer vacation and school comes along just to end it...") and when it's all said and done, I imagine it will completely wipe me out."

Now that we are more than half-way through it, it's a good time to sit back and talk about how things are going.

No doubt, the kids and I have been incredibly busy.   Probably a little too busy... but this is likely the only summer I will ever have where I can spend this kind of time with them and I want to enjoy every minute of it.  Surprisingly for how busy we have been, we've only reached into the Jar of Fun three times (Repitland, T&D's Cat of the World, and Lakemont Park).  Those other outings?  All planned.

I'm having a great time, and I hope that they are too.  Last weekend aside, we've made some great memories and I am looking forward to making more over the next five weeks.  The Jar of Fun will finally make its return this week and there are some fun activities coming up in August... some local things like Ag Progress Days, Grange Fair, and 'Penn State Day' (when we'll bike around campus and visit the All-Sports Museum, the Arboretum, the Creamery, etc.) and quite possibly some not-so-local things like the Little League World Series, or NFL training camps (if such things exist this year).  We're also thinking about a short trip to the beach and are hoping to get back to Citizen's Bank Park for my birthday. 

As the summer starts winding down, I know I need to get very serious and very focused on my job search again.  For as much as I have loved the time with the kids, I am ready to head back to work.  I believe that full-time wife and mother is one of the most difficult career paths and I'm pretty sure it's not for me (If we are Facebook friends, you know that I have also ruled out wall-paper scrapper, painter, baker, photographer, and truck driver over the last seven months).

But have no fear - just past the half-way point of our "Summer of Fun", I think we are all still full of enough energy to finish the race.