The Last Hurrah of Summer

School is almost upon us. Tomorrow the kids will go and meet their new teachers, and Monday is the first day (excuse me while I go do the dance of joy). It was nice spending more time with all of the kids, but I won't miss the fighting they did with each other. Well, it was mainly Caleb and Michaela against poor Joshua. He got so used to being top dog for most of the day during the school year and they reminded him daily that he wasn't. Unfortunately for him, I think Anneliese has plans for a coup d'etat.
Yesterday was a doozy. I have a friend from my MOPS group that moved in last year just down the street. She has four kids, too, so we like hanging out together because, as she said, it makes us look less crazy. Our kids get along really well, although we think it is funny that they have all teamed up boy-girl. Her oldest, a girl going into 1st grade, is in love with Caleb. We thought she and Michaela would get together, but I guess we were wrong. She has twin boys going into kindergarten. One hangs out with Michaela, and the other is attached to Anneliese, much to his mom's worry, since that attachment is in the form of him carrying her around. Joshua has teamed up with her 2 year old girl.
The whole basis for the day started out with Backyard Burgers. On Tuesdays, they have Kids Eat Free night. For $6.37, we got 4 orders of waffle fries, 3 orders of chicken fingers, 4 sodas, and a really delicious mushroom Swiss burger. I think I have a new Tuesday night dinner plan when Perry goes out of town. Anyhow, the only one that my friend knew about was in Cumming, so we were trying to figure out something to do up there to make the trip worthwhile (just looking at the website, the closest one to us is a few miles away- YAY! I really like the food, can ya tell?). She has a friend who invited us to go swimming, so that killed a few hours in the afternoon. Last week when she told me about Backyard Burger, she told me about a park she had found, so we decided that this would be our morning plan to tire the kids out. It was a really nice park. Lots of shade, places for the kids to play, and a little manmade creek running next to a sand pit, so the kids could make sandcastles. Our day pretty much went like this:
9:45 Leave for park
10-11 Play
11-11:30 Picnic lunch at park
11:30-1 Play some more
1-3 Go home, get ready for swimming
3-3:30 Drive up to Cumming
3:30-6:30 Swim
6:30-7 Get everyone dressed in the cars for dinner
7-8:30 Dinner
8:30-9 Drive home

The kids had a blast. Anneliese even had fun in the pool. She usually grabs on to you and whimpers, but yesterday she was splashing, head butting Michaela, letting me put her on her back, and hold her out and spin her around. I thought the kids would fall asleep in the car, but everyone was awake when I pulled into the driveway. The kids had slept in a fort under the dining room table the night before, so I said they could sleep in it again last night. Caleb and Michaela pretty much went straight to sleep, but Joshua was up for over 30 minutes. At 3:45 in the morning I was awakened by the t.v. coming on downstairs. Both of the boys were up. I sent them back to bed. Everyone slept in. Joshua was up pretty close to his normal time, and Michaela followed not long after. Caleb was asleep till almost 9, and Anneliese slept until 9:30. That was nice. What's not nice is the housework I have for today. Ugh. Guess I'd better get started.