May at Warp Speed

This time of year seems to move at warp speed for our family. The kids last day of school is May 30th, which means Glorious Summer is on the horizon. Our time has been filled up with end of the year field trips and parties. Between dance, Activity Days (Ashlynn), baseball, cub scouts (Briggs), piano lessons (Ty), and the never ending line up of playdates, our schedule has become a bit of a brain teaser puzzle.

You know that brain teaser about the fox and the chicken and the corn that you have to get across the river in a boat, but you have to make sure that the fox doesn't eat the chicken and that the chicken doesn't eat the corn, so you have to separate and supervise and take what seems like superfluous trips back and forth across the river? That's how I feel lately. I'm just trying to get all of my cargo safely across the river, and still enjoy the ride.

 Last night, our baseball coach made a mistake on our schedule, which means I went to four different parks before I found the right one that our team was playing at. It was a bit of "Let's tour all the parks of Southern Elk Grove!". We would pull up to a park and see a bunch of little boys in red shirts. I'd drop Briggs off and send him running to the dug out only to notice that he was slowing down because they weren't his team. Elk Grove is known for it's surplus of great parks, so having nothing to go off of, we just kept going to park after park until we finally found the right one...45 minutes late (of course nobody was answering their cell phones to help straighten up the mess).

The only thing that saves me is that most of the kids are old enough to be left home alone for a bit so I don't have to drag EVERYONE EVERYWHERE!

But this month alone Ive been to the State Capitol, Coloma State park, Fog Willow Farms, and end of year swim party next week, worked at the school book fair for a couple of days, helped out with a farmers market at school, helped Ashlynn audition and get the part of Lady MacBeth in her school musical, taught a relief Society lesson and spoke in Sacrament meeting, attended umpteen dozen baseball games and practices and dance rehearsals, collected dozens of costumes from 40 kids for ashlynn's performance group, helped with Mormon helping hands days... really this is just the tip of the ice berg.

This time of year I love preparing for summer. I'm in the process of getting scrapbooks together like I did last year of all of the lunch notes I wrote to the kids. This year I included a smattering of instagram photos, as well. I'm making another summer playlist, as well. And there's always our Summer To-Do list, which I love. I always want to get their treasure boxes of school memories organized and accessible because they always bring home tons of projects that they have worked on throughout the year. And then there's the occasional OCD urges that come out of the blue, "Let's deep clean the grout in the kitchen!" "Let's make a quilt!".

I just have to remember that I enjoy all of this stuff, and I have to remember to constantly check my calendar, otherwise a chicken or a fox is going to get left behind!