This is my car. This is an essential part of my life. Without it, I could not run the Stringham Family Taxi Service, and where would I be then? (In a much simpler, possibly dull place, I am sure. ) May is an absolutely insanely crazy time at our house. And I think it all culminates in this one week. We have 3 kids playing soccer with either practices or games 2 days a week for each of them. I play soccer once a week. Shawn has lots of extra band practices because Studentfest is this weekend, plus since Summer Solstice is only weeks away, the Eddie band has also commenced practicing. And swim team started this week for Jonas and Samantha. Of course, we also still have piano, harp and dance going on. This is how my afternoon went: Pick Amelia up from preschool. Run home to get swim stuff, ballet stuff and snacks for all. Load it all into the car. Load kids into car to go pick up Samantha from school. Samantha in car. Toss her her swimsuit to change into, then toss her a cheese stick and some crackers. Drop her off at the pool. Drive back to intercept Jonas and his friend, Tanner who are now off the bus and walking home. Drop Tanner off. Toss Jonas his swimsuit to change into, followed by his snacks to eat as well. (All this time I am, of course, driving very carefully since I have children not buckled in and removing clothing - safe, huh?) Get back to the pool, unload everyone, watch Samantha swim for 5 minutes. Get Samantha out of the water and Jonas in. Hustle all the girls back out to the car where Samantha now changes into her ballet clothes while we drive to ballet. Drop her off, return to the pool. (Yes, this is now my third trip there in an hour!) Unload and watch the last 10 minutes of Jonas' workout. Then reload everyone, take Jonas home, unload all of the clothing, backpacks, towels, goggles, shoes, wrappers, papers, etc., from the car and dump it in a pile on the floor. Load the girls back up and go get Samantha from ballet. Bring her home. Whew! Now the problem is, they all want dinner, and I've clearly not made any yet. Say hello and good-bye to Shawn as he heads off to scouts with some mention of how it would be nice to see him for an extended period of time in the near future.
And to think we chose it all. At least it will only be this crazy for a couple of weeks. After next week, preschool ends, soccer ends, Studentfest will be done and things will settle into a slightly more manageable groove until school lets out for the summer.
It kind of makes me nostalgic for the days of a couple of young kids when the days seemed long and we were looking for things to do. Anyway, it brings me back to my point of the necessity of my car in my life. It's a sad state. I wish I were less dependent on it, especially since, as Samantha puts it so gently, I am killing the penguins. (They apparently learned something about global warming at school and my driving the car is clearly a direct cause - but she doesn't seem willing to ride her bike everywhere either.) So there you have it - my life of craziness. If you think you don't see me much or hear from me often, you can now understand that I barely have time to come up for air and my antisocial behavior is nothing personal. :)
6 comments:
Just become a slacker parent who skips swimming lessons if the kids are double booked. Not that life won't still be crazy.
Ahh, did you ever think it could be this fun! Your kids sure are lucky to have such a dedicated mom. They sure are cute too!
You are making me laugh my head off. Oh, and cry too. Want a beer? Sounds good to me....That would really add to the safety of your unbuckled, clothing-changing, food passing driving. Were you on the phone too? THEN you'd be as good of a driver as me! Hope life settles for you soon...
It will only get worse as they get older...that's why we try to keep it simplified: one sport and music lessons. That keeps us running everyday. However, summer does change things a little. I have yet to sign the kids up for swimming (trying to keep it to one sport), but I think I will in the near future. They can't make it to swimming until school is out. Technically Joshua's soccer ends tomorrow, so I could throw him in the pool, but he's against swim team. He said he'd do the stroke development class and the technique class. That sounds good to me. Lauren's going to do swim to win.
melissa..thanks for visiting my blog. i have two comments on your last two posts. As far as keeping your house clean..someone recently told me this quote and I love it.."Cleaning your house while your kids are still growing is like shoveling the walks when it's still snowing!" I have a hard time with that because a messy house makes me crazy. As far as your most recent post..I just go back to the recent talk in conference (now I can't remember who said it) how we need to simplify our lives. our children grow up so fast and sometimes we are so busy that we can't "enjoy the moments". I think extra curricular activities are good but when they get to the point when are days become such "whirlwinds" and we don't have to sit down for a meal together,etc. it's time to reevaluate. I think our kids really will be okay if they aren't involved in so much. It was a good wake-up call for me to really try to enjoy each day by keeping things as simple as "possible". But, it's not as easy as it sounds. I think most moms struggle with the exact thing and maybe that was the inspiration for the conference talk.
sorry did that sound preachy? i hope not!
Melis!
I hated to miss the Solstice but hey what can ya do. We need to get together once soccer, swimming, ballet, basket weaving, cake decorating, wild animal wrestling and whatever else you crazy kids have going on is over.
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