A Quiet First Day

In many respects, today was like any other Monday. I had my martial arts class, I went to the grocery store, I did some chore around the house. Oh, and I sweated a lot because it was so ridiculously oppressive weather wise- not that that’s normal for a Monday. I just felt like complaining about it. The Wife left for a couple day business trip as well.

The main difference was I had the two shadows today.

I don’t think weekend really count in the whole Summer vacation thing, since they get every other weekend off during the year as well. Thus, today was the kid’s official first day of vacation.

It ended up being a pretty quiet affair. I let them watch some extra TV today since I figure a few days to decompress from the year is fair game. They’ve started watching back shows of Mythbusters on Netflix. This morning, they watched one of my favorites: the one where they blow up a cement truck. It was just as awesome now as it was the first time I saw it. The kids loved it too.

The day itself went pretty smoothly, with a minor hiccup in around lunch time where they got sick of each other. I broke them apart and had the lass doing some of her Summer work prep for 2nd grade and had the boy start reading The Magician’s Nephew. They spent about 45 minutes each on their work and then we got a surprise phone call.

The relevant background is simple- I was supposed to have pavers delivered here today. This morning, I got a call stating that they wouldn’t be arriving today. I was mostly OK with that, but then decided it better to say something to make sure that I didn’t continue to get bumped, so I contacted the rep I’ve been working with and he agreed. So to this point, I was expecting the pavers sometime tomorrow.

The phone call I got was from the rep telling me the pavers would be arriving in about 45 minutes. I was excited because now I wouldn’t have to worry about waiting tomorrow. The kids were excited because, well, something different. They had questions about the pavers- what the looked like, how heavy they were, how they went together and now they’d finally get a chance to see them up close an personal.

So that set off a flurry of activity as I shuffled some things around in the back and generally prepped to have the pavers on hand. The kids … got into their bathing suits and played with a hose. They were soaked from the hose. I was soaked from sweating and simply moving around.

After the pavers arrived, it was time for some dinner. We went with the old Summer favorite, hamburgers. Yum. The lass tried to weasel an ice cream promise out of me. I looked at her funny, asked “When did I say anything about ice cream?” at which point she gave me a goofy smile and shrugged her shoulders. She tried, but I wasn’t playing.

Our evening wrapped up with the boy’s martial arts class, a trip to the grocery store and a trip to Lowe’s to pick up a diamond blade for cutting the pavers. We finally settled down for the evening with more Mythbusters. We watched Adam and Jamie blow things up while some mild thunderstorms rolled through. The kids finally went to sleep in the basement, where it’s much cooler than their rooms. I’ll be sleeping in A/C tonight.

Not a bad day for starting the Summer vacation- no big fights, no major disciplinary actions, no real stress from the kids. But then, it’s only the first day.