School starts for my daughter today and I can’t help but reflect back upon the last few months. At the advent of every summer, I make grandiose plans.
We’ll do a different activity every day!
We’ll make lots of new friends!
We’ll engage our minds by daily learning in science, reading and math!
By summer’s end, the result is usually the same: “Yeah, right.”
It’s not that we didn’t learn a lot this summer. I learned:
1) Broken DVD players should be immediately replaced during multi-day road trips to Canada.
2) Husbands should not get two speeding tickets within a half-hour of each other in Wyoming.
2) Every detail of navigating Bowser’s Castle in Super Mario Bros on my son’s Nintendo DS.
4) I need a vacation at the end of summer vacation.
I really did try. A few weeks ago, I introduced my kids to Math Dice, a game I bought at the beginning of the summer. Predictably, my math-prodigy first grader answered all the questions while my math-challenged third grade daughter let him.
I wasn’t fooling anyone. Half-way through our game, she glared at me. “Hey, I know what you’re trying to do. You’re trying to trick me to do MATH!”
Though she’ll never make it as a mathematician, she may have a future as a private investigator.
The only thing I did really well (besides played, traveled and played some more) was encouraged the kids to read every day. But even that has its drawbacks–it’s called The Day of Reckoning.
In an ideal world, we could go to the library, check out a stack of books and return every last one of them on time.
In my world, due dates are forgotten, overdue charges are heaped up and books are lost.
My end-of-summer tab?
Well, let’s just say I learned something else: I’m single-handedly doing my part to support Jefferson County Public Libraries.
Better luck next summer.
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I'm a Canadian-born mom of two, former Denver Post columnist, family travel writer, editor of MileHighMamas.com and 9News contributor. Expert on all things Utah, Denver, family and travel. Lover of laughter and life. Happily married to a man obsessed with growing The Great Pumpkin. 