The Plan for Summer

Set your phasers to 'FUN,' kids - it's mothaf******' Summertime!

This summer, I've made it a point to devote as much of my time as humanly possible to writing. The first time I attempted to do this, Kris squeezed out Alayna, which more or less destroyed any and all free time. The following summer, she worked full-time, which meant that Yours Truly had to babysit the year-old Cannonball full-time. Not so awesome. And last year, Kris up and squeezed out another kid, which, once again, put Brian's Writing Time on the back burner.

Not this summer, kids.

I've been hitting up the local library from 10am - 1pm, every day, and treating it like a job. Sure, I do have a Man Room at home, but the kids are always screaming about something in another room, or else banging on the door and demanding I come out and watch them trace their hands.

You know. The usual.


So during the mornings, while I'm out of the house, I'm able to catch up on tons of crap that I've been working on or else have been meaning to work on. It's been swell, and I feel like I'm accomplishing something instead of just pissing away my two months off sitting around the house chasing kids around and not showering as much as I used to.

Speaking of bathing, the pool has turned out to be the single greatest thing this family's ever put money into (kids coming in a close second). As the weather heats up around here, our mega-kiddie pool (or, smaller-sized adult pool, either way you want to look at it) has become our go-to haven during the blistering afternoons and evenings. The kids seem to love it, too - Alayna's getting to the point where she'll willingly jump to someone in the water from the top of the ladder, and Abby has gotten to the point where she'd rather just play on the ladder instead of in the water.

Everybody wins.

This week, the Cannonball also started Bible Summer Camp at the Peace United Methodist Church. Something by the name of 'Pandamania,' don't know if you've heard about this before...

Pandamonium: You may pay for the whole seat, but you'll be sitting on the edge!!!

Yeah.

Don't know if you've heard about this before, but apparently it's pretty cool with Jesus (and he runs our church, so... there you go). It's more or less three hours of games, arts and crafts, and sing-alongs. And at some point in time, they should stuffed pandas and t-shirts out of a cannon into a crowd and make toddlers and grade-schoolers trample each other in the name of the Big Guy.

That gives me and Abby full run of the house from 6 - 9pm every night, which is cool. So far I don't think Alayna's learned anything from the Bible, per se, but it gets her out of the house for a few hours so she can get some social interaction outside of school, and as a result, Daddy can get a small window of peace and quiet.

Praise Jebus!

- Brian