Summer Part Two

This is the last week of school for four of the five kids. The Stinkboy will be finishing 6th grade, Spuddies and Boones are finishing up 7th grade, and The D is wrapping up his sophomore year of high school.

I'm not sure when or how all of these kids got so old. I was looking back at newborn pictures of the Missus, and even though these 17 months feel like they've passed in the blink of an eye, I can see how much younger each of the older kids looked, and the nostalgia can be almost overwhelming.

But enough of that sweet sadness. Summer is almost here, and what the heck am I going to do with all of these children?! I swear, used to look forward to summer vacation.

I do have some plans.

I did the Zombies 5k (which is the Zombies, Run! version of the couch-to-5k) starting in February of this year. I completed it in a little over eight weeks, and then continued running about three times a week since then. Now I've got two of the kids interested in running with me! They think that the zombies sound fun, and I think that they are a little embarrassed that they can't keep up with me when we go walking. So, starting this weekend, I'll strap the Missus into her jogging stroller and have the Stinkboy and Spuddies trailing behind me as I lead them to running a 5k before the end of summer! I hope they are both able to stick with it, because I don't plan on forcing them to go, just encouraging them. Hopefully having each other as accountability will help as well. I think I'll have them drag our dog Willow along, too. I've been wanting to bring her along, but I haven't been brave enough to wrangle a stroller AND a dog.

I'm not looking forward to a fight that will probably be coming up soon with the Stinkboy's father. Stinkboy has been on the receiving end of quite a lot of bullying at the middle school he's been attending in the next town over, and he's ready to try the small school here in the Village. His father has been fighting me on letting him go here for six years, but now that Stinkboy is the one who wants to go, I'll be giving it all I've got. Stay tuned for more drama on that front.

One thing that I've slacked on lately is my chore chart. The kids' schedule has been very chaotic lately. Stinkboy has only been with us weekends, while Spuddies has elected to stay with us full-time. The D and Boones are still with us every other week, but they also come over after school on their mother's week. Boones, however, stays after school quite a few days. So it's been kind of a headache trying to write up a weekly chore chart, and instead I've been asking the kids to do individual chores as they come up. But now that summer is here, and they'll all be home messing up the house all day, I'll be putting the chore chart to work again! I love it when the house is clean and I'm not the only one who cleaned it!