Writing

Venting alert: I’ve found writing can really help me when I’ve got a million thoughts floating around in my head.  So I’m just going to write.  It’s been a while since I’ve written a lot on the blog, so I figured, “Why not?”  :)

My life’s feeling a little crazy lately.  Well, maybe a little more crazy than our “normal” level of crazy around here.  :)  The last few years at the boys’ school I’ve headed up the annual Bike2School Day event, which I’ve been planning on doing again this year.  I’ve done it before, and although it does take time to meet with the other volunteers, correspond back and forth with everyone about their responsibilities, & make sure everything gets done, it’s a relatively small event (as far as school wide events go) and I feel like I’ve got it down.  So we had that a couple weeks ago and I think it went well.  Check.  One big thing crossed off my list.  

The one that’s really making life crazy at the moment is the annual school overnight Campout event.  Several months back when someone asked me if I was doing the campout, I responded “Yes,” thinking they were asking if I was planning to volunteer on the committee to help out with planning the event.  Fast forward a few month, and come to find out they thought I was heading up the event.  And by that time I felt that correcting them would feel to them as if I had committed and was backing out on the commitment I had made.  So I stuck with it.  (Swearing to myself & my husband that next year I’m only running Bike2School Day.  And volunteering to chaperone the 6-7-8 grade dance — that one is always fun to help with each year).  But with getting Kolby signed up for his freshman classes for the Fall, adding a new busy schedule of high school cross country practices for the summer and fall to our calendar, and Kolby’s first day of early morning seminary along with the other 8th graders next week, I’m already starting to feel the increased time load of once again having kids at more than one school again (so more than one schedule to balance, more school communications, etc.), and Kolby’s not even in high school yet.  {We’ve had it SO nice these last few years with ALL 5 of our boys at a K-8 school!}  

Anyway, every parent with more than a few kids knows how the schedule, the school assignments, projects, tests, finals, practices, presentations, performances, parties, field trips, and events tend to pile up to an almost unmanageable overlapping quantity as it gets closer and closer to the relief that is the last day of school.  It’s always like that, that’s just how it goes.  It’s been busy around here lately, with field trips, music performances at school, juggling the weekly cub scout & boy scout schedule & piano lessons for all the kids, & Courtland’s new gymnastics class (I did feel rather little guilty not signing him up for the boys’ gymnastics team when he was invited to join, but the idea of my 9 year old practicing hours a week, and traveling to meets, and the increased cost — we just can’t do it right now.  Maybe some day???), Camden’s therapy sessions (which have helped so much over this school year, they’re totally worth the drive), grocery shopping, experiencing more headaches lately including 2 migraines in the last 2 months (when I usually might have one every couple of years), trying to get the kids to keep up on their chores while choosing my battles, Eli being offered the opportunity to take an advanced math class next year (which means he needs to finish up the math class that he normally would have taken next year via independent study and take all the tests over the summer), dentist appointments (the good news: we sure lucked out that our kids haven’t had a single cavity until now, the bad news: until now — time to schedule another dentist appointment), Kolby recently being tested & diagnosed with mild ADD & testing/school anxiety and now trying to figure out some ways to support him with that (at school/tutoring/therapy), vet visits (it turns out Harley isn’t really going blind, yeah!  He’s just starting to show signs of old age eyesight a little early on, either that or he was actually a couple years older than the shelter thought when we adopted him, who knows?), buying some good quality bikes for the older boys’ cool summer 100 mile bike excursion from San Diego to Disneyland with Papa & Nana!, having Eli’s bike lock cut and his bike stolen (time to start over searching for another good bike for him on craigslist), buying 7 new better bike locks, photographing all our other bikes & their serial numbers, trying to keep up with the normal things that I like to do like genealogy with Mom, doing a bit of gardening, planning some upcoming backing trips with the family, and organizing weekly planning rides for my mountain biking group (even though I feel like I really don’t have time for them right now, but I’m trying not to cancel them because then I might really go crazy), spending the afternoon registering the 2 youngest boys for cub scout summer camp (which includes detailed online registration, mailing in a thick packet of paper forms, copies of front & back of insurance cards & my driver’s license, etc., etc., etc.), helping my 5th grader select his courses for middle school next year, turning in continuing registration forms for all the boys for school next year, trying to keep track of the end of year classroom events/presentations/performances and deciding which ones of the overlapping events I will go to, picking up my 7th grader from school every other afternoon while his class has their human reproduction unit so I can teach him this curriculum at home (last year Kolby’s class did this in April, so doing it in the last few weeks of school this year instead is keeping me on my toes), trying to figure out how we’re going to work next school year’s schedule (I know, I know, it’s way too early to be tackling that right now, right?  Guess not.  The piano studio coordinator told me they’re adding 40 new students over the summer, so if we want to switch lesson times [which we will have to in order for Kolby to do cross country in the Fall] then we might want to switch now.  Only thing is there isn’t an available lesson time slot that we could switch to now, except the one that would make him miss out on his church youth group nights for the rest of the summer.  And he definitely doesn’t want to give up on piano, youth group, or miss out on starting cross country in the Fall.  I keep pushing that one off my ‘to do list’ for today, onto my list for tomorrow.  Maybe there will be a better answer to that question tomorrow), oh and my laptop dropped and stopped working last week - I prayed a lot - still didn’t work no matter what I tried - we went to the Apple store, opened it up, and it started working! (don’t tell me prayers don’t work!) - it’s been working ever since - and that little nagging feeling in the back of my head keeps telling me I need to sit down and take the time to back up the laptop again while it’s working, and my parents are out of town so I need to stop in and check on my sweet grandma who’s living with them - except tomorrow is Tuesday (ok, it’s really 1:12am now, so today’s Tuesday) - my crazy day - and I don’t know how I’m going to get over there - tomorrow I’m bringing Eli home to teach him about sex ed, then Courtland has gymnastics, while Camden & Isaac have piano lessons, followed by carpooling with Courtland, Taelin, & their friend to cub scouts, followed by Michael doing boy scouts with Camden & Eli, while Kolby rides his bike to youth group, and I take Isaac to his cub scouts.  Luckily my sister in law offered to make lasagna for all of us for dinner tomorrow, which is so nice of her!  And I’ve got to get going on several more tasks for planning that school Campout — I’m counting down, a week and a half, then that event will be over and I’ll just have my “normal” life to catch up on.

Anyway, hope that didn’t sound like I was complaining too much.  Writing all that down was more for me than for anyone else.  And I was only complaining a bit, right?  (Fortunately, the average casual reader probably didn’t get through all that anyway).  Maybe the next time someone says, “I don’t know how you do it with five boys.  You always seem so calm!” they can come read this.  :)  

Anyway, I sure am ready for summer.  Family reunion, Michael’s high school reunion, Eli’s studying/tutoring/math tests over the summer, volunteering at cub scout camp, Kolby’s high adventure camp, Disneyland trip, Michael’s/Eli’s/Camden’s scout camp, cross country practices, backpacking, high school registration — I hope we can find time to fit in a few good hikes over the summer too.  Well, my eyes are starting to get tired.  Time for bed.