School bells ring... are ya listening?

It's that time of year again! A time of cheer, a time of happiness, love, peace, and goodwill towards men. No, silly. It's not Christmas.

It's time for the kids to go back to school!

Don't get me wrong, I adore my children. I love them more than life itself. But I'd be lying through my teeth if I said that three months of vacation is a dream waiting to happen. Oh sure, the first month is fun. You have so many ideas and plans! You'll go swimming at least twice a week! You'll have picnics at the park and playdates at the playground! You'll host rousing barbeques on your back deck! You'll pee rainbows and poo bubbles!

Okay, maybe I got a little out of hand there.

By month two, reality begins to click in. It's been raining the last two weeks and swimming has been out of the question. When it's not raining, the park is too muddy to play in. Your kids are sick of peanut butter sandwiches, and no one is hosting a BBQ since that big e-coli scare. The only one peeing anything of note is the family dog- you should probably have that checked out by the vet.

Don't even get me started on month three.

The point is, twelve weeks is a long time for the average family to be stuck in 80% humidity plus happiness. It's not just the parents. My son is secretly gleeful that soon he'll be racing around the playground with his buddies again, not having to deal with his four year old brother All Day, Every Day. And the four year old? Well, lets just say that I've seen him looking longingly at the occasional school bus a time or two this past week. The wait is almost over. In just fifteen days they'll be dressed in their back to school finest, waiting for their golden hued chariots to whisk them back to a life of friends, structure, and milk in cartons.

It hasn't been the summer of our dreams. Somewhere amidst the sunburns and peanut butter, my husband got sick. Really sick. We thought it was food poisoning to start- a bad slice of pizza was surely the culprit. But he didn't get better, no matter how much Pepto we poured down him. So while I ran to baseball games and birthday parties and figured out grocery shopping and carpools, he stayed home, in bed, sick. And when July reared it's head and my favorite holiday- the 4th- approached, rather than celebrating with us by buying explosives for small children, he could barely make it through the day. He spent the holiday weekend in the hospital, getting steroids and antibiotics. Instead of lighting the candles on our youngest's birthday cake, he watched from his hospital room via webcam. He came home after a week, but it's been a roller coaster of medications, tests, many questions, and few answers.

Life- and Summer- go on though, blood draws and colonoscopies be damned. And truth be told, this summer is heading towards it's close. Fall bedtimes have been reestablished, much to my children's chagrin. And while I may not look b ack at Summer 2009 with the fondest of glances, I can say beyond the shadow of a doubt that it was memorable in it's own ways. Even if I didn't pee any rainbows.