Good Things about Having My Kids Home for Summer Vacation

I'm not a natural optimist. I tend to be a "my glass is half-empty" or even a "my glass is nearly empty--who drank all my cream soda??" type of person but I refuse to head into the next four long months of summer vacation predicting trials and tribulations due to the boredom of my four sweet children.

School ends next week and there have got to be some good things about the kids being home. I'm just sure of it . . . and darn it all I'm going to hunt them down, discover them one by one and list them:

1. Summer vacation means I have someone to mow my lawn. I've been training Spencer for two years now and I think 2007 will go down in history as The Year that Spencer Mowed (assuming he doesn't lose any of his fingers or toes). I'm planning on savoring it.

2. I get to sleep in. Not a bad trade off--four children running through my house all day in exchange for an extra half hour each morning.

3. In fact, I don't have to do any more driving to the school. No more dashes through rush-hour traffic, racing the 5 miles back and forth to deliver kids to play practices or pick them up from running club. That's got to be worth something, right?

4. Actually I can tell you exactly how much it's worth, about $100 a month in gas. When I filled up this week it was $2.89 a gallon and as much time as I spend running back and forth from the school summer vacation translates into some serious Mom Cash. Suh-weet.

5. With all the time I'm saving from transporting children maybe Spencer and I can finally finish The Lord of the Rings. We've been reading it aloud together for--what year is this? Hmmm. . . . about nine years now and I'm definitely ready to get that Hobbit home.

6. And speaking of reading, with the kids home we'll get to read the last Harry Potter book. That's something to look forward to. Oh, wait. No, no, that's not a good thing because Andrew will insist that we wait for him in the evenings and not read ahead during the day. The kids won't like that and will bug me to sneak ahead "Just one chapter! Pleeeeease! Dad will never know--we'll pretend we haven't heard it before!" So scratch that. Not a good thing.

7. We're planning a fun family camping trip in July. Couldn't do that if there was school. So that's a good thing too, right? It counts. We're going up to Tangle Lakes, which is officially the World's Greatest Camping Spot--voted so seventeen consecutive years by Moms Do All The Packing Magazine. What? You don't get that publication? You should, it's the story of my life.

8. I get to reopen my Family Cooking School--the world-famous "Cordon Goo." We give the phrase "fusion cuisine" new meaning. During summer I teach the kids to cook and they cook meals each week. This could possibly be an official "Good Thing" about summer vacation though it does work out to be more time-consuming than merely cooking the meal myself so the jury's still out on this one.

9. I have a babysitter. With Grace home during the day I can go to the gym whenever I want to work out and have her there to watch Lillian. A little more freedom when I need to run and grab something at the store can't be bad.

10. With the kids home all day the odds of them producing material worthy of a blog post increases drastically. During summer vacation I have a 73% greater chance of them doing something that's bloggable. Increased Creative Fertility--that's a plus.

11. I won't have to hear complaints about homework, gym class, locker partners, the girls in the lunch room, gym class, tests, and--oh--gym class. Four months of no school means four months of not having to play Therapist. The doctor is NOT in--not until September.

12. I have someone there to carry up my grocery bags when I get home from shopping each Thursday. That alone is worth risking the Boredom of Summer Vacation.

13. I get to enjoy my children. When the weather's good and we're sunning ourselves in the back yard, when I can smell the tomato plants and the kids are playing in the sprinkler it feels as if all is right with the world and I have moments of utter contentment. Those are good times.

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