Surviving the First Week

Friday.  Why the heck am I this tired when it's been such a (fairly) mellow week?  Getting half of them back on the school track perhaps?  Yet there have been no other activities.  S & E were gone most of the week so I didn't have to prepare "real" dinners.  I think I am mourning the end of summer and the looser schedule.  However I'll admit to being glad that they're at school learning/socializing rather than quibbling over whose turn it is on the computer.  It's peaceful which I am appreciating.  They both love their teachers and seem to happy with their classmates and friends.  I am going to focus on that.  It's all good.  And I planned NOTHING for this weekend.  I knew S would be exhausted after the Boston trip and then having to get up at the crack of dawn to be up in Irvine or Newport or wherever he is.  Big kids go back on Tuesday.   Yay!  I'm really excited for them.  Last year and first years of high school.  It's insane when I think about my original playgroup in Bmore.  If we would have stopped at 2 like most of them did, I'd be looking at an empty nest in a few years.  I cannot even wrap my head around that.  How much I would have missed out on if not for them!

5 Years Ago

Five years ago we were just moving here.  In some ways it feels like yesterday, in other ways it's like we've always been here.  We had so many wonderful things happen to us while we lived in Baltimore-we had our children, bought our first house, built our lovely house, went on some amazing trips, enjoyed time with my parents and brother, established ourselves financially, went from being a newly married couple to a big family.  Yet our time in San Diego has been the creation of a wonderful life for all of us.  We have such a wider, deeper circle of friends, we are settled in with a great Jewish community, the kids have wonderful, diverse schools, S has been able to start a successful business.  It has felt "right" from the moment we got here.  And now-we're on the precipice of some huge changes-E and B in high school, with E starting her senior year.  Deep breaths.

New School Year

The past several years I will admit to feeling anxious by the time summer is coming to a close.  I'm usually feeling a combination of regret that we didn't "do" enough to fully enjoy the time off, and nerves about what the new school year will bring.  I decided to go on the offensive this time around.

To feel like we fully enjoyed ourselves I wrote up a bucket list with suggestions from the kids and myself of things we'd like to do.  It was a mix of experiences (mini golf), restaurants (Curry House) and movies (Minions-ugh.)  I taped it to the refrigerator and we checked things off as we did them.  We've gotten to almost everything-save Disneyland.  In all honesty, we've probably done the same amount of fun activities every summer, but something about seeing it on paper, in the kitchen, has made me (I don't know about the kids) feel like the summer has been well spent.  We had a great long vacation back in MD and DC to kick things off.  They each did a variety of great camps (highlights would be skateboarding for G, Mt Chai for A, and jazz for B.  E did her internship with the political campaign.

The other thing I did a few weeks ago was start a notebook.  Notebook.  It really should be capitalized or decorated in a lovely way to demonstrate how much I love it.  It contains a daily list of to-dos, which include the mundane like watering, or who needs to be where when.  The best new thing is my Happiness List-which I got off Mara's post on FB (3 Acts of Gratitude, Fun 15 of Cardio, 2 minutes to just Breathe, Conscious Act of Kindness, the Doubler-wherein I take 2 minutes to think of a positive experience with bullet point details.)  To this I added "try something new every day", Meditation, Journal, a few stretching times, reminder to eat 3 full servings of greens, and 6 glasses of water.  I want to feel aware, and positive, and looking for the good in myself and others.  I want the specific reminders of how to nurture myself.

In my Notebook, I also created a ginormous list of projects that mainly relate to cleaning, sorting, donating, dumping and organizing.  I've been going gang busters on this-of course I still see some big projects ahead of me (hello, master closet) but I feel so good about how much I've been able to get done.  I also made a Dinner Ideas section for when I'm drawing a blank.  Also some fun lists to refer to:  Places to go with Kids, my bucket list of fun things to do in the area-in fact, the Torrey Pines hike is a new favorite for myself with E & B too.  (It remains to be seen if we can get A to join our enthusiasm.)

All of these things together have made me much calmer and feel like I have a handle on myself, and the house.  I'm not feeling overwhelmed, then procrastinating, and then feeling guilty and cranky.  I think that's helped me feel "rested" and ready to face the new school year.  I was thinking that I wasn't as "nervous" as I usually am because I don't have the kids in a million different, potentially conflicting, activities.  And there's an element of that-I am happy to only have 2 schools, and glad that E can drive she and B.  But I really think it's because I'm feeling good where I'm at.

Happy last few days of summer!  It was a great one!