First-Month-of-Summer Blues

One of my favorite things about my job is that I get the Summers off to spend with the kids. The first three weeks are so much fun! We go exploring in the hills by our house. We find all the local parks and visit them one by one. We get all of the bikes fixed and functioning to last us for another year. Yep, those first three weeks are amazing.

Slowly, without anyone expecting it, the monotony starts to sink in. The kids are sick of what the outside world has to offer. They want to play the computer, or watch videos. They are starting to say those two most dreaded words in the English language... "I'm bored!"

With boredom, comes fighting. The whiney voices start going, the teasing and altogether obnoxiousness that having five kids in one house for three weeks straight causes. It can't seem to be avoided! (Did I mention I don't have a vehicle this Summer, so I can't really escape like I used to be able to?) To add to this, I have school work that I am behind on, so every little shriek, whether good or bad just grates on me like nails on a chalkboard! How can I think with all this chaos going on around me?

I do what any mother on the brink of insanity would do.... I borrow a car and load the kids up for a trip to the dollar store! Oh wonderful, amazing dollar store! With all your cheep paper and crayons and coloring books. Your little craft kits and dinky toys. Your puzzles and notebooks, bubbles and jump ropes, playdough and cookie cutters! I can spend $20 dollars and come away with a menagerie of things for the kids to do with their time. Did I mention all the candy a child could ask for that even their little piggy banks could afford?

When we finally come back home, the house is silent. AHHHHHHH, I take a sigh of relief and get back to work on my latest research paper. The children are all behaving like angels at the kitchen table with their little projects and other various things from the dollar store. So what is the cure to the-first-month-into-Summer blues? The beautiful, blessed dollar store in all of it's cheep, dinky gloriousness!!!!!