Summer Loving.

Well, it's our last weekend of the summer! We did it!

The past few days we've been doing some additional fun things, and I've joked that I'm trying to trick the kids into having lots of good memories of ice cream and swimming and fun nights out, versus the dog days where we watched a lot of TV inside to escape the heat or I yelled at them to quit fighting with each other and quit talking back to me.

We got all of our school supplies at Target - please remind me next summer to not take them with me, as there was a lot of crying about who got to put glue sticks into the cart, etc etc. I'm sure somewhere on the internet there is a story written by a stranger who is like "mean mom in Target, I saw you snap at your son and threaten to walk out with nothing, cherish every moment because before you know it, they'll be gone to college." Hopefully she also caught the direct quote "I know you have to go potty because you won't leave your penis alone, so quit fighting me, it's time to go potty!"

Mimi took them back to school shopping and they came home squealing with joy about all of their new LEWKS, and then have told everyone they met since about their great LEWKS for the coming year. I also did a thorough closet purge, so hopefully now everyone's drawers are full of clothes that actually fit them. I suspect Adam has outgrown his 5T pants over the summer though, so a trip to Children's Orchard will be in order for more "cool jeans" when the weather gets colder.

Yesterday we went to the beach with Gigi for a few hours after our morning YMCA work outs. The tide was low as were the rip tides, so it was fairly relaxing for all, even if the ground at Doheny is super rocky. At one point, Ellie and Gigi went for a walk down the beach, and then I saw them walking out to the sand bar, Gigi hauling Ellie, since she had water shoes on and Ellie did not, and eventually I thought "this is how my mom takes a digger before another trip to South Africa and once again doesn't get to go" so I paddled out on the boogie board, and told Ellie to lay herself on it and paddle in. The best part of the kids and the boogie boards was when they'd wash up on shore and not know what to do, and seemed offended that I thought they could roll off into 4 inches of water and then stand up using their legs. As I said, meanest mommy. Adam spent a bunch of his time digging and building with two other boys. Their main material was some of the larger rocks from the bottom near the shore, and so they'd find one and shout "come and look at this big, bad boy!" Listening to three little dudes yell "look at this bad boy," "do you have a bad boy?" "come help me with this bad boy!" was pretty hysterical. If I had a nickle for every time they said bad boy, I would have at least been able to pay for our time on the parking meter.

We finally found out their teachers - Adam has the same teacher for kinder that Ellie had for kinder and first. She was a brand new teacher when Ellie was in kindergarten, so it's kind of fun that we get to three-peat on her career. I know nothing about Ellie's second grade teacher, but a couple of her girlfriends from last year are in her class. She loves learning and is such a teacher's pet that I don't really worry about her too much (plus in this day and age, public school teachers are doing it for the love of the job, not because of the outrageously high salary and great benefits.) I can't wait to see what they think of day one! In the meantime, just getting all of the lunch items ready to go, back packs pulled out of closets, and mentally preparing to set the alarm and be up at a decent hour after a summer of sloth.