Memorial Day Fun

I started to call this Memorial Day Laziness, but then I remembered that laziness is fun, and fun is better sounding. Steven was off today, which was very nice. It's always nice for him to get a paid day off to sit on his butt and play computer games mow. But you know what kind of parents we are? The kids don't officially get out of school until Wednesday, although they aren't taking attendance this week and sent all of their stuff home on Friday as a Big hint to keep em home. Great, loving parents that we are, we decided that we had em home on Saturday and Sunday, and we are gonna have em home most of the summer, and those teachers are getting paid with our tax money to keep our kids, so we sent em to school. We enjoyed today mostly kidless, while we moseyed around the house. It was great.

When we picked them up, they were super excited to see daddy. Jacob said he was the only boy in his class that came today, and he was super lonely because he didn't want to talk to the girls. Ashley said that there were only 8 kids in her class and they watched two movies. That's what that wonderful school had my kiddos doing today: watching tv. All. Day. Long.

But that's ok, because I had a kid free day with my hubby. It was worth it. Tomorrow they can start their vacation, and it's still technically two days early! I should really get my money's worth and send em, but then they'd only sit and watch tv all day again. It really is a stupid stupid thing to have scheduled school this week. Whoever is responsible for that one is a genius.

Ashley didn't get out of dance class, either. Their recital is two weeks away, so they are cramming in all the classes and rehearsals they can get right now. The lady who runs the studio is hilarious. We went in for their costume fitting last week, and all the mothers were in there, and Glenda starts the meeting by saying:

Ok, mothers, I've been having these meetings all week, and I'm going to do something different this time. You are not going to visit. I have decided I am going to be the queen and you are not going to talk to each other.

So when she says coming to classes right now is mandatory (and puts it in super big letters) I tend to take her seriously. She is also the only person, ever, that my child is actually sort of respectfully scared of. It's so great. I need one of her at home.

I did some grocery shopping while she was in dance, so that's probably why my feet hurt. But in the spirit of memorial day, we decided to humor the kids. They wanted to roast hot dogs, so we dumped em on the grill. And they wanted to eat outside, so we did. It was actually pretty nice, especially since we broke down and bought a patio umbrella to give us some shade.

After dinner, we went for a walk in the woods to pick some blackberries. We didn't get a whole ton of them, but we sure did have a memorable experience. Between getting pricked by all the thorns, and the kids stomping their feet on the ground to keep away snakes and toss in mama getting swarmed and chased by horse flies and Ashley slipping and falling on her knee, it was the bestest walk-in-the-woods-to-pick-blackberries we've ever been on. I'm sure the second time we go will be even better! Anybody have any tips on how to get rid of the horse flies? It'd be nice to be able to walk down the trail without Steven having to trail behind me holding his dull machete and swatting me with it to keep em off me.


I also spent the evening bleaching the nasty moldy swings on the swing set and cutting Steven's hair. Trust me when I say that this was the highlight of my day. He did the cleaning up, while I munched on a fudge round and put my feet up.

And I've decided that being able to send the kids to school on Memorial Day makes it one of my favorite holidays!