Yesterday: Best Day Ever?

Recently I concluded that May is my very favorite month of the year.  Oh sure, June and July are a close tie for second, but there's just something so awesome about the anticipation that May brings.  Sometimes the weather still isn't all that warm in May, but you know, you just know, that we're thisclose to being done with the cold.  And you still have the whole warm weather season to look forward to.

Yesterday we got a taste of all the awesome warm weather that is to come.  And as soon as I see some actual evidence of warmth, I'm all excited to go to Target and spend too much money on summer gear!  Which is exactly what I did yesterday while Nathan was at preschool.  I'm not quite ready to take the plunge of buying myself a bathing suit (no pun intended), but I did buy Nathan a new pair of pirate-themed swim trunks and a matching pirate rash guard shirt.  I bought some new sunscreen, and ... oh, is there anything better than the year's first whiff of sunscreen?

Plus I made my annual wading pool purchase!  We get a new wading pool every year because inevitably the previous year's pool got destroyed in some late-summer storm, or else crustified in the garage all winter.  My husband is endlessly displeased by my serial wading pool purchases, but I feel like a kid can't have a childhood without a wading pool.

I have to say, this year's wading pool is the best one yet!  More on that later, though, because I'm trying to go in chronological order here.

So ... after Target I did a 30-minute treadmill workout and 30 minutes of weights with Trainer Jill, then rushed to pick up Nathan from preschool.  He goes to preschool at the park district, so while we were there I paid to renew our annual pool passes, signed Nathan up for swimming lessons, and then signed him up for camp.

Now, this is where my big fat dilemma comes in.  (Note that this is really neither big nor fat, not even in the figurative sense, and it's such a minor issue that it doesn't even really deserve to be labeled a dilemma.)  So, here's the deal.  I signed Nathan up for all 8 sessions of camp (a session being one week, five days a week, from 9:00 to noon), figuring that way I could hold our spot and then cancel whatever sessions we didn't want to do.  But now I don't know if I even want him to go to any camp, because as much as I like structured activity, I don't like the idea of Monday through Friday mornings being taken up by camp.  But then with no camp, we have no structure.  That seems like a bad idea, too.  I just don't like the fact that our park district camp option is so all-or-nothing.  I think a lot of parents face this dilemma: how much structure versus how much unstructured free time?

I'm a structure person, but yesterday we just had the best afternoon of unstructured activity.  It took us awhile to blow up the pool with Inflatron-3000, then get the right combination of warm and cold water to fill it up.  But once it was filled, it was a hit.  We had a total of 4 other little boys come over and play throughout the afternoon.  The boys spent hours mixing the substances in our pool, sandbox, and rice box.  I admit that this mixing irritated my anal side, but I figure if our yard can rebound from 6 disgusting months of snow and frost, it can rebound from little boys having fun.

And we ate watermelon and strawberries, and drank iced tea, and it was just the greatest sunscreen-scented afternoon.

Here's a cell phone pic of Nathan in the pool.  My finger is covering the upper left-hand corner, but I think that adds to the air of spontaneous summer fun!

By the way, that's a lot of writing on that beach ball.

And now today?  I was up at 5:00 to do my early-morning swimming with Swim Buddy Dana, which meant by 7:00 a.m. I was filled with endorphins and ready for the day.  I took my laptop and coffee out and sat among the birds and bunnies until Nathan woke up, at which point we concocted a homemade bubble solution and blew bubbles with our bubble wands of various shapes.              

All fun, simple activities.  That's why I'm declaring this summer the Summer of Simplicity.  We don't need a bunch of fancy activities and field trips, we can have fun in our backyard!  (The beach counts as simple fun, though, because what can be simpler than water and sand?)  I think Nathan could use some simplicity, because he's been busy this school year with his preschool and his program at the high school, and in the fall it will probably be preschool and soccer. 

So, it could be that three days into the Summer of Simplicity, I'm ready to pack up and go to an amusement park, but right now I'm digging the idea of simple, old-fashioned fun.  Maybe I'll make a pie.