Night swimming

Summer is winding down.
I'm so sorry to remind you of this.   I hate to be a kill-joy, but this is one mom who will be a tiny bit relieved to pack lunches tonight and line the backpacks up at the front door.

Tomorrow morning the kids will be back at school.  Well, 2 of the kids at least.  The boy has "staggered entry" this week so will meet his teacher briefly in the morning and then he has a full day later in the week.   But those girls of mine?   I will be gifting them to their teachers' safe-keeping for the year.   Hip, hip hooray!

This summer has been busy.  We worked our way through that bucket list and had lots of great adventures.   We decided to end our break with a "big" outing and took the kids for a little get-away to the Laurentians.   We booked a hotel room and bought on-line tickets for the water park at Mont St-Sauveur.

This little holiday taught me something pretty amazing about our family.  Sometimes, a change of scene (even a not so great hotel room!!) can be the best cure for cabin-fever.   The week leading up to this trip I had my doubts.  We were really starting to get on each other's nerves.   I mean, cabin fever crept in and the kids were literally at each other's throats.   I threatened to call the whole thing off.   Ironically though, taking our gang out of house and putting us in a 200 square foot hotel room with 2 beds and one bathroom made us get along much, much better.

We used the little hotel pool.   James took them to the ice machine.  Over and over.   We played cards and walked to the restaurant for dinner.  We used little bars of soap and jumped on the beds (shhhh!!!). We swam some more.   At night.    The kids loved that!   We did not do chores.  There was no laundry, basement wiring or yard work.  We talked to our kids and laid down beside them until they fell asleep. Ava held my hand as she drifted off.   She's 8 years old.   I haven't watched her fall asleep since she was a small baby.  That was pretty special.

Once the kids were asleep James and I were stuck drinking wine in the dark while catching up on everyone's ice bucket challenge videos on the tablet with pretty sketchy wi-fi.   It was fun, in a National-Lampoon vacation kind of way.  It reminded me of little vacations I took with my family many years ago.   I grew up one of three kids too, and the rule of thumb for us was always that the first child to fall asleep in the hotel bed usually woke up on the floor!!!   Good times.   I don't know how my parents did it, but I'm glad they did.   These are priceless memories we make with our kids.

The water-park was great too.   The morning started off a little chilly, as most late August mornings do. The sun was out and it warmed up nicely.   We had next to no line-ups, which was a treat.  The kids enjoyed the heated pools, the fast slides and some amusement park rides.    We had a fantastic day- and a very quiet ride home!

We will take this summer memory and tuck it away.   The bucket list is down and in it's place will likely go our September schedule or some new school work.  Change is in the air.  There will be no more night swimming this year!   Now, off to pack those lunches!!