How would I grade myself on ‘summer’?

The beginning of summer is like a second New Year’s for me. Every year, I vow that I’m going to take advantage of the break and get organized and NOT leave everything until the last minute. 

And every year, clichéd as it is, fall and back-to-school roll around and I realize I’ve failed. 

Right now, it’s the Sunday before the first full week of school (we started on Thursday), and I’m behind on writing this blog because when I went to do school laundry, I realized that Sophie needs new gym shorts because the old ones are too small and it’s going to be too warm tomorrow for her to wear the gym pants she wore in spring. So I went to Walmart to find a pair of cheap blue mesh shorts but OF COURSE it took me three passes around the kids’ clothing department to find one measly pair – luckily, in her size – on a bottom rack. 

The gym shorts are simply something I overlooked. But most of my summer plans, like New Year’s resolutions, went similarly kaput. 

For one thing, I swore we’d do the summer enrichment packets and reading log a little at a time and not the week before school started, as we often do (sorry, previous teachers). I dutifully included the packets and several books when we went on vacation after school ended, and the girls actually completed some of it, but the habit quickly petered out once we were home. And I didn’t push them to work on it while they appeared in “Annie” – although I’m hoping the 200-page script can count as reading. 

With a lot of coercion in the waning weeks, Sophie managed to finish both her packet and reading log before school started. Annabelle’s packet is done, but I haven’t tallied up her reading yet, so we might have to cram in a few more books before the log is due back this week. 

School supply shopping? Epic fail. I dread that task, since the girls end up wanting the colorfully-patterned $5 notebook over the plain $.50 version. I left it until the day before school, and while I thought I was being slick by ordering online for pickup on the way to back-to-school night, naturally the website bogged down on me and the order wasn’t in on time. Oh, and I somehow missed a couple of things and had to go back the next day. *facepalm* 

I didn’t sort through all the uniforms to see what fits and what we could donate to the uniform exchange; heck, there are plenty of clothes in their closets and dressers that are too small and need to be sorted, but I didn’t get to that either.  

So, I’d give myself a C-minus for the summer, and that seems generous.  

But when I got emotional about it yesterday and apologized to the girls for not doing a good enough job “summering,” they both hugged me and told me they had a great summer. 

They’d give me an A, and that’s really all that matters.