Where are the lazy days of summer?

Last night, as I walked through my own bedtime routine, I realized my house is trashed. I don't mean there were a few toys on the floor and some dishes in the sink. No. My counters are completely covered with dirty dishes to the extent that making coffee this morning was a task straight out of MacGyver. There are bags containing various sports equipment blocking the front door. And laundry, well, let's not go there.

What I planned to do this summer.

Suffice to say, we are a month into summer vacation...

Hold on, I'd like to backtrack a few decades. Do you remember when summer vacation meant just that, a vacation. It was a  break from school and all the running around A time when children laid around their house whining about being bored and parents planned trips places just to keep them entertained? It meant week long movie marathons and staying up late to eat ice cream and catch fire flies.

Are you deep into memory lane? Let me pull you back.

My summer reality

My life is crazier this month than it has ever been in the school year! Daily swim team practices, three day a week baseball practices/games, gymnastics, musical rehearsal, princess camp, home improvement projects... Yesterday alone, we had a five hour swim meet with the oldest and double header baseball games with the youngest. Dinner didn't happen until 9! You get the point?

Ok, so summer vacation is a third gone. I had planned to take this three months break from school (and work) to write a book. You know, that book people have been hounding me to work on. I think I have written maybe 3,000 words in the last month. There just doesn't seem to be enough hours in the day!

It looks like about the middle of July sports will be over and things will begin to wind down. That means I will have approximately six weeks of lazy days. Granted, we have a family vacation scheduled in the middle of that and two kids planning long weekends in opposite directions. Maybe I will have to step back a few decades as well and start writing pen and paper style!

Have a happy summer and enjoy those rare moments!

Nine hours later: I'm not going to lie. I just took a two hour nap and I don't feel the list bit guilty about that! Now, to catch a few hidden minutes to work on a book.

A June Post!

So, I realized this morning that I haven't posted in a while - almost a month to be more precise- and I was just hoping you didn't miss me too much. Almost a month ago, my kids started their ridiculously long summer vacation and I've been trying to focus on them. Summer means a push to read more and unplug. In other words, it's quite a bit of screaming and yelling. They don't understand why they can't be on some kind of device all day and I don't understand where my creative, fun-loving children went.

Yesterday, we started our new summer technology plan. All devices and remotes are to be deposited into a basket at 10am and are not to be retrieved until 7pm. Of course, everyone yelled about it for roughly thirty minutes, but what happened afterwards amazed me! One kid asked to go the park and another read a book. I haven't seen all three of them in the same room and not screaming at each other in months either!

I'm not going to climb on my soapbox about how a little technology goes a long way especially since we purposely moved to a school district that pushes the envelope. I will simply say, too much of anything is a bad thing.

My point is, I don't really have a lot of time to blog lately and my brain is a little fizzled out when it comes to interesting subjects as I spend my days at swim team practices, baseball games, gymnastics lessons and just entertaining three children. What little time I have to sit at the computer, I use to write. That doesn't mean I'm not around. While my kids are forced to unplug completely, I still have a phone stowed away everywhere we go! You can find me on twitter (@toriLallred) and instagram (@torilallred) and Facebook.

UPDATE

No electronics from 10 am to 7 pm... Have you wondered how that worked out? It didn't. It lasted about three days. I would still say it's been productive. The kids now know I have the ability and the will-power to take the electronics away so they make a little extra effort to do other things and I've learned to set aside things like cleaning the house to spend the rare free time we have with them.