The Last Week of Summer

The last week of summer ... unbelievable. This morning the kids are all off to school and the dog and I are Home Alone. Bwa-ha ha ha!!! I spoke to my sister on the phone about five minutes after they left and she said, "What are you going to do all day now that they are gone?" Well, let me count! All sorts of things that I can't do because I get interrupted, like patching up the paint outside or thinking an entire thought. And things I can do in utter silence, like filing all the random papers that pile up on a daily basis around here or studying to pass the Oregon portion of my licensure for Social Work. Or things that are absolute torture when you have the kids along like running multiple errands all at the same time or shopping for a new bathing suit (bad enough the way it is...). One thing I'm particularly looking forward to is going to the DMV for several hours in order to get my license plate for the car. Finally. Oh, well, four hours with a book at the DMV is better than four hours with the kids at the DMV.

We had a darn good final week, though. We went for walks in our neighborhood parks with the new dog. We swam in the pool. We brought Stephen to a movie last weekend with a couple of his friends from the neighborhood. The kids went to the doctor for their check-ups (okay, that wasn't so fun for Thomas because he had to get booster shots). We had our friends the Marti's here for the afternoon on Saturday and we went to Art in the Pearl and out to lunch with a family in the neighborhood that we have gotten to know.

Dude! Do you realize how cool this is??? We did stuff with other people from the area! Like, omigosh! We might be adjusting! Even today for the first day of school, the kids were in a relatively good mood: anxious, but excited all at the same time. If you know them at all, this is a miracle in and of itself. Stephen was funny, though. He tends to watch the clock so he isn't late. This morning, he looked at the clock and said, "8:01! Four minutes of summer left!" Pitiful.

And I will close with another classic quote from Stephen this week. We were standing outside talking to Mark and Amy, the neighbors that had driven us to the vet when Sundae died, and introducing them to Sasha. (We hardly know these neighbors, just so you know.) Stephen noticed one of the neighborhood cats wandering around and went off to pet it. After a few minutes he came back, got Mark's attention, and said, "Um, excuse me, but a cat just crapped on your lawn." "Crapped"? He just said "crapped" to these people we hardly know? So now you know why it's such a big deal that we did things with people from this area - they are still willing to get together with us even with our many idiosyncrasies. Beautiful.