School has been out for a little over a week.  We left for Knoxville for a few days with my mom the day after school was out, so I haven’t had the chance to make a workable plan for these long days with all 3 kids home.  In addition to suddenly being thrown back into a routine where my oldest (and most challenging) child is home all day, my husband is spending much of his time at “the office.”  I hate to whine about it, but since it’s a commission only job it would be nice if he could work from home occasionally so I could do more.  Just sayin’.

Obviously I’m dealing with a lot here suddenly.  I’m trying to get in at least 4 hours of work at kgb_ each day, which is hard when I have 3 small children to referee, so I’m not making as much money as I could.  Plus I am now behind in my class.  I have to write a 2 page paper and take a quiz before tomorrow night and unless the husband sticks around here long enough at a time I’m not scheduled to work, it’s not going to happen.  I feel awful complaining about him being gone because he is busting his butt to try to bring in some kind of income…any kind of income!  But I am feeling a little bit like my attempts to better our situation through my work and school are not as important as his.  Which is not the case at all so it’s an irrational thing to complain about.  Still, complaining is one of the things I do best so here I am.

And now my dilemma about finding a groove to these long summer days has turned into a whiny complaint.  Let’s get back to the matter at hand, shall we?

So, with a month of summer break left (I *love* year round school!) I’m trying to figure out how we’re going to survive the next few weeks.  I’m hoping we can manage a field trip once a week…to the zoo, to museums, one of the aquariums, or some other fun and semi-educational trip.  Tonight, I’m going to sit down with my husband and see if we can come up with a list of places, then pick 1 day each week that he can join us on an outing.  I’m also going to try to schedule play dates at least once a week with friends and make it a goal to take them to a playground once or twice a week in the morning.  I’ve learned that the key is to have lots of activities.  Down time doesn’t go well at my house!

Luckily I also have the distraction of running 3 days a week.  The husbands and kids join us on days when the weather is good, so that gives them some additional time out of the house.  Plus we’re trying to make it to the free concerts at Depot Park on Thursday nights, so our evenings are pretty full.  As long as I can keep us busy, I think we can survive it.  And I’m sure that once he goes back to school I’ll be missing him like crazy!