Looking at summer....

So rehearsals started.
Rylee went Monday night and came home around nine so pumped. She couldn't stop singing. Even after I put her to bed I could hear her quoting lines from the play. She had so much fun. I think she is the only girl lost boy and she is loving it! I sent her in a cap with her hair tucked up in it to give her more of a boy look and feel. We're both going to be cross dressing in this play with Rylee playing a boy and me a pirate. Funny huh?
Last night we blocked part of act one (my Mrs. Darling part) and she worked on choreography. I finished before she did so sat in to watch and wait for her and Caleb-our neighbor boy who is also a Lost Boy. Rylee is having a blast and showed off her bruise this morning from hitting her knee so many times while dancing. (Dancing bruises are common at our home and Rylee was proud to show off her first!) Dev & Kam don't rehearse until Saturday and they will be dancing like crazy. I've worked with the choreographer before. In fact, I start dancing Thursday and I'm a little nervous. I don't like bruises or aches, or pain. And I know ALL of that is in store for me.
James is back to work. Sixteen days. Boo. Why is it his day's home go so fast and his days gone go so slow? He worked like a crazy man on Monday trying to get things ready for us. He had to get the sprinklers going-which involved re-doing the garden, got the central air ready to go, changed the furnace filters, filled the water softener with salt, got the lid out of the sink pipe in the basement bathroom etc. What would I do without him? I told him I would try really hard to not kill the garden or break anything while he was gone. Poor guy. He fixes things only to come back to a new list of repairs. I have figured out how to plunge toilets and get garbage disposals running with this work schedule of his. I've also learned how to bribe Austin and his friends to assembly bbq's, carry heavy stuff and open the wheat bucket. (I hate opening those!)
I am savoring every last moment of my quiet days of freedom. Ten and a half left. Then SUMMER! I look forward to not making school lunches each morning and the morning ritual of trying to motivate everyone out the door, I also look forward to Friday swimming days, and just hanging out but I am dreading the "I'm bored, there is nothing to do" whine that can be heard echoing repeatedly through the summer break. Sigh.
I've got Alex set up with a tutor twice a week, going to the summer reading program twice a week in June and then about six days of working as a peer leader for the summer program for the special education program in our school district. I'm working on gathering worksheets from the ESL teacher and the special ed teacher. I made a deal with Alex that if he will study for two hours, five days a week. (Including all these programs and his independent reading IN that total) he will get $100 at the end of summer. The catch is he has to be self motivated, look ahead at his schedule and work over the weekend if he needs to miss a day and have his studies done before eight pm. (I can just see him starting to study at ten pm to midnight!) He's excited about it. He's already made a schedule of how many minutes of what he'll work on. I'm thinking of offering him ten minutes of Rosetta Stone studying Russian in that two hour time frame in hopes that he can brush up and retain some of his language? I'll have to see what he thinks. He's so funny about Ukraine. He claims he doesn't like how it sounds. I think the sound of his language just brings back so many sad and bad memories? I don't know. I'll just have to talk to him and see what he thinks. I think I might have Rylee try to learn Russian and have Alex assist her? That might be a good plan....
I've always held "Mom School" over the summer with all my children. Some years I'm more motivated than others. I start out strong and by mid summer I fizzle to nothing. Having Alex has changed that. So both Rylee and Alex will have "Mom School". (Once they're teenagers-forgettaboutit!) For the most part the kids have fun-I mean seriously, what else to they have to do? Besides play mindless video games on end? (BTW I'm limiting video and computer time to an hour a day. I am a cruel mother aren't I?) And although we now have an antenna on TWO TV's we don't have Disney or Cartoon Network so TV watching is to a minimum. When we didn't have TV we just got out of the practice of watching it. We don't know anything about this year's American Idol, or who's even on Dancing With The Stars or tune in every week for a favorite drama or comedy. And guess what? It's wonderful and the earth has continued to turn and life proceed like normal without TV. I honestly don't know how we fit it into our schedule before. Of course, I didn't blog as much before, maybe I've only switched one vice for another?
Rylee and Alex are going to week long a day camp in June. Dev has Oakcrest and Girls Camp. Kambree has drill camp, Austin has scout camp and Alex turns twelve in July and will got for an entire week of scout camp too. Add Peter Pan rehearsals and performance at the end of June, school starts back up August 26th and we've got a pretty busy, crazy summer. But I'm sure not busy enough to avoid the prevailing whine of "I'm bored, there's nothing to do."
(Sigh)
Here's to my next ten and half days!