Summer Mom Versus Reality

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pic summer mom

Every spring as the number of school days left starts to dwindle down, I make the BEST plans for summer. I have visions in my head of my children not only sitting down every day to do workbooks, but finishing them and learning new material ahead of schedule before the school year starts. (truly hilarious)

I have plans to do exciting and interesting things all summer long around the Valley. I see myself making homemade ice cream for the kids and beautiful salads and delicious BBQ meals for dinner. Then reality hits sometime mid-July and I am not sure how I got off track. And I repeat this process every year with some expectation that it WILL be better this year.

Here we are again, mid-July and all of my wonderful summer plans have gone down the drain. This is my list of my picturesque summer and the reality of it all….

1) Those workbooks I buy for the children….they get about halfway finished. Sometimes they are completely forgotten until the week before school starts. Summer mom doesn’t really like enforcing school work. I might just be too burned out from doing it all school year.

2) All those grandiose plans to check out new locations around town? I think about taking the kids to the water park, checking out new exhibits at the Children’s Museum and trying out some new places we haven’t tried yet. Before we know it we are too busy with other activities and we never end up making it to the fun stuff!

3) The fabulous summer meals I planned on making….mostly we end up alternating between easy drive-thru’s and hot dogs, mac and cheese and some sort of chicken dish at home. (not really the healthy summer meals I envisioned). When I have to make three meals a day for the whole family, simple becomes best.

4) Every year, I say that I am not going to overschedule the children with camps. I picture a relaxing summer break with lots of reading and relaxing. This disappears quickly because the kids hear about all those fabulous camps that their friends are doing, and who can resist gymnastics camp, cooking camp, musical theater camp, lizard camp and parkour camp? It all just sounds too fun. Before we know it, I am driving all over town trying to keep track of the camp schedules.

5) In my head, I see fun family nights filled with board games and time spent together. Reality is we are all too tired driving around in the heat all day. After a quick meal, most of the kids disappear to watch Teen Beach Movie again and I can’t wait to catch up on my Bravo shows DVR-ed.

My summer might not turn out exactly how I picture it. But I do enjoy the extra time I get to spend with the kids. There are moments when I see them working together to create a new fort or write a play to put on for mom and dad, and I think that it doesn’t really matter if they finish their summer workbooks or spend too much time on the Ipads. The kids should spend their break the way they want because very soon, too soon a new school year will start and their days will be filled with school, homework and activities.

Who else can relate to the disappearance of my picturesque summer? Tell us about it below!