Partial to the bean…

I’m finally starting, after 3+ weeks of chaos and ennui, to feel like I’ve got my feet under me again. Sammi’s small-and-belated birthday gathering is now planned for mid-July, as is our annual 2-night, girls-only, super-fun jaunt to the beach. We bought our pool passes last week. Sammi starts Science in the Summer today, much against her will. Now we need to start using up some of our Living Social deals. We’ve got vouchers for, like, 4 different restaurant meals, some popsicles, a food truck tour of Philly, and a trip to a museum to use up this summer.

In other news, here are some coolish links:

Awesome People Hanging Out Together

Mitoza

Photopic Sky Survey

Cat gets caught barking by a human and resumes meowing

Gee, I forgot all about posting pictures! A new batch is up now, starting here. Except for the first and the last, they are from our yearly York Fair excursion.

School’s been out since last Friday, and ever since then I’ve been discombobulated. It’s more than the change in schedule, or having the kids home all day every day; the days have just been so fractured and so busy. I haven’t been able to find the space to breathe and think, and that’s not about having a quiet house, particularly (although I do love my quiet house, which I won’t see again until September). Mostly I just need a day, or ideally two consecutive days, when we don’t have to go anywhere. I need time to be home and catch up on things. That’s not today, though, and it’s not tomorrow either. Cross your fingers for the latter half of the week. I’m gonna plotz if I don’t get some solid downtime, stat.

In lieu of a more substantive blog post, and in an effort to clear my plate of some of the things that are bouncing around in my head, may I suggest you go play with Wikipedia? Wikipedia is fun. Try Get to Philosophy or The Wiki Game!

Ah, we meet again, little red-hot thermometer with the stink lines coming off it:

If you need us, we’ll be huddling in the A/C with the shades drawn for the next two days. Bleh.

HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY
HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, PRECIOUS
SAMMI-GIRL!!!

Happy 3², and here’s to a year on
Cloud Nine!

And just like that, another school year has ended.

Today was the last day of school, and it was a pretty emotional one, especially for Alice. She’s old enough now that the graduating seniors are not just mysterious “big kids” — they’re friends, people she’s known for years, and they’ll be missed. One of Alice’s BFFs is not coming back next year, either, and there were many many hugs there today. And due to budget/enrollment constraints, the whole school is going to “get small” for next year — there will be no lunch program, and the entire school (K-12 plus administration) will be moving into one smallish building so they can “mothball” most of the rest of the campus to save on utilities. So not only are we losing people, we are also losing or completely rearranging many familiar spaces.

Alice has been at this school for nine years, with only four more to go. This afternoon, “The Last Day of School” hit us in a deeper way than it ever has before….