Tonight was Parent Info Nite at the BoyChilds school.

They always say such nice things about him.

I’m sure they have no idea how much it means to me.

The end of summer vacation is upon us.

It has been a good summer.  We’ve gotten to travel some.  We’ve gone swimming at the health club.  We’ve been to the zoo.  We visited the aquarium.  We visited the Alamo.  Swam with the Baluga whales.  We’ve chased, captured and freed bugs.   It’s been a fun, peaceful time.

The BoyChild won a family membership for a year to the Science Museum for reading books at the library.  It wasn’t the X-Box 360 he wanted, but still a nice prize.

This year, for some weird and wild reason, we decided to do things a little differently.  We finished up our back-to-school shopping (clothes, shoes, school supplies) by about the first week in August.

When uniform pants went on sale at Target, we bought seven pairs as well as one pair of shorts.  I bought the shorts because the BoyChild said he wanted and would wear them.  They haven’t been on his body since we bought them.  I’m not sure I’ve actually seen them since we brought them home.  I’m not convinced he will actually every wear them.  But I did tell him if he DID wear them, and liked them, and it remained as hot as the surface of the sun, that I would buy him more.

We stopped at Stride Rite (the BoyChild still has Fred Flintstone feet) without a buy one get one free incentive and bought shoes.

What is the deal with the schools and shoes?  The uniform letter we got said, “all white or all black shoes.”  The little Catholic School the  kids use to attend instituted the same policy this year.   I mean did a study come out saying it was going to turn the kids into serial killers if they wore, say, silver tennis shoes?   The BoyChild had exactly one pair of white shoes that came in his size and one pair of black shoes that came in his size to pick from;  he went with the white.  I did make the decision making process easier.

One Sunday afternoon we decided to get all his school supplies.

I always start out with good intentions with the school supplies.

My plan is always to shop around, check prices, buy a few items here and a few items there.

The reality is we usually wait until the weekend before school starts and then run around like crazy people trying to find school supplies that have already been decimated by the more organized parents and freaking out because “OMG!  My kids will be scarred for life if they don’t start school with the blue erasable pens”

It came in pretty inexpensively.  They BoyChild decided he did not need a new backpack and would carry the one he had from the year before.  Hooray for the fiscally responsible 3rd grader! He already had a flash drive that he used last year.

The strangest thing on the list (at least the strangest thing to me) was the request for 8 tennis balls.  I’m sure there’s some reasonable sensory-coordination sort of explanation for that item.

So.  School started last Wednesday.  The BoyChild said he was happy to go back to school to see his friends but didn’t want to have to actually work.  I’m afraid he’s in for a disappointment.

I will miss the mid-week movies.  The late night runs for ice cream.  The trips to the pool and then putting him to bed smelling like the pool.

Time marches on and another summer comes to an end.

Today we drove from San Antonio to Fort Worth.

Enroute we stopped, among other places, at the Ikea store in Round Rock, Texas.

There were 310,000 square feet of Ikea wonderfulness.

We ate in the cafeteria.  As ridiculous as it sounds, it is a great idea.  As we rounded the corner where the cafeteria is, it became obvious the BoyChild needed to eat.  We stopped and fed him.  Otherwise, we probably would have had to leave to get him something to eat.  I had potato cheese soup, the BoyChild had Mac & Cheese and David had the swedish meat balls.  All very yummy.  Thankyouverymuch.

We bought some silverware.  Lint roller thingies.  I wanted a cow skin rug that they had for an imminently reasonable price.   Surprisingly, David seemed kind of freaked out by that suggestion.

I can die happy now.

Today my blog is seven years old.  Seven.  I’ve been doing this for seven damn years.

Wow.

A lot has happened in those seven years.

I’ve become more circumspect in my time here.  More cautious of what I write.  For a variety of reasons.  I’ve gone through my archives and taken down some of my more. . .shall we say, juicy stuff.

The BoyChild was a little over a year old when I began.  He’s eight now.  Getting ready to start the 3rd grade.  It boggles my  mind.

I plan to get back to writing more.  I enjoy it and I need to make more time for the things I enjoy.  I enjoy the friends I’ve made here.  I will do better to be more interesting and may the next seven years be better than the first.

The BoyChild did not win the Wii (which he did not want) nor did he win the X-box 360 (which he did want).

Instead he won a year’s membership to Science Museum Oklahoma!

Not an X-box 360 but a pretty cool prize nonetheless.

The BoyChild has been reading books in order to win things from the library this summer.

For every eight books he reads, he gets a ticket to enter a drawing.  The GRAND prize is a Wii or an X-Box 360.

The BoyChild was talking about the possibility that he might win the Wii but he really wanted the X-Box 360.  I suggested that if he won the Wii we could sell it on e-bay and buy him the X-Box.  He said, “or if I won the Wii, I could donate it to the Church.  I’m sure the youth group could use a Wii.”

God I love that boy!

The other night we rented Yes Man.  It was a Jim Carey movie that came out in 2008.  The premise of the movie is that Jim Carey is a mid-level bank executive, going no where fast.  His wife left him for undisclosed reasons (or if they disclosed them, I’ve forgotten what it was).  He has stopped answering his phone or going out with his friends.  He meets a friend, who talks him into going to a meeting run by the Yes Guru.  At this meeting he’s convenienced that he needs to say yes to anything that’s offered him.  The movie follows the chaos that takes over, and the good things that happen, to him because he said yes to something or someone.  I’m not a Jim Carey fan, and didn’t have high hopes for this movie, but it was marginally kid friendly, and we have exhausted Red Box’s inventory of kid friendly movies.

It has caused me to thinking about how much I say “no.”

Over the last five or six years, with the BoyChild’s behaviors being unpredictable, and the GirlChild being so awful, we have said “no” to things much more than we’ve said “yes.”  It was hard to plan anything because we never knew how one or both the kids would be.  We got into the habit of saying “no” far more than we said “yes.”  While it was happening, I don’t think we were very aware of it.  It just.  Happened.  We would get invited to things.  We’d say no, or worse yet, say yes and then have to call and cancel.  Or even worse we’d go and have to leave.

I think we’ve gotten into the habit of saying “no.”  I know I have but it feels like it’s become our automatic answer anymore.  It feels more comfortable than saying yes.  It’s not good.

I’ve decided I’m going to say “yes” more.

I started tonight.  I went to the meet and greet for my 30 year class reunion.  No one was asking me to, but I knew it was going on tonight.  I’d not signed up because last Spring when they were planning it, things were in such chaos, so I said “no.”   I decided I didn’t have any reason not to go.  I went.  It was good.

I’m going to make an effort to say “yes” more.

It has been brain melting, mind numbing hot.

That is all.

Does anyone besides me think Fantastic Mr. Fox was kind of creepy?