I made it!!! Wahoooo!

I'm not one of those Moms that dreads the last day of school. Nope, I LOVE Summer vacations and all of the cool things that we plan & do! Aside from the obvious, slower paced mornings... hey, you'd love the break too if you had 4 kiddos that attend 4 different schools at 4 different times! I should have ZERO cellulite for as much as I run my behind off in the mornings... but sadly my morning exercise hasn't affected that one bit. As I was saying; aside from the slower paced mornings, we pack in as many fun things as we can. I love participating in the local library programs. The library is important to me. As a kid, we didn't have Internet... shocking, I know... in fact we didn't have computers. period. If we needed to write a report we usually spent at least one Saturday at the library scouring through card catalogs, reference books, taking notes & READING. I love the smell of a library. There's that certain musty book smell about a library... LOVE it! Does that make me a little nerdy? Oh well. It's important to me to share those things with my kids. Sure, it's not as convenient as point & click but I believe the experience is invaluable.

One of the things that Kaydee & I came up with for a super-cool Summer activity is traveling... very far... A LOT! Who wouldn't love to travel and especially to distant lands? Since we aren't able to vacation for long periods(for real) frequently, we've settled for.... are ya ready?...... really corny title..... keep in mind, I had the help of my 8 year old daughter to think this up. *DESTINATION IMAGINATION* Basically, we have decided to pick a place on our globe every Sunday night. Beginning Monday we will imagine traveling to our destination and throughout the week we will cook, make crafts, and learn a bit about the lingo & culture of our imaginary vacation spot. Cool huh? This is in addition to swimming lessons, art camps, youth theater, kid friendly museums & Crocodile Dock camp at our church. Sound like fun? I look forward to our Summers throughout the school year and try to think of different things to do as we go and as they get older. As we near the end of Summer, usually a few weeks before school starts, the natives become restless (like most kids usually do) and we start seeing those signs of what I call *vacation burnout*. That's when I start my "i can't wait for school to start" countdown..... just in time. ; )

To kick off our Summer we are going to load 'em up and head for the mountains for a little camping trip this weekend (for real...LOL!). We're only going for 2 days & one night. Kaydon has never been camping so this should be interesting. I figure that as long as we have his woobie and enough ice to keep his sippies cool we're good to go.

So, what kind of plans do you have for the Summer? Traveling anywhere?

Until next time... ~*~Ciao~*~