I took five weeks of leave from work to spend time with my daughters this summer. It has been awesome.
We have gone swimming at the indoor pool, the outdoor pool and at the beach. We went for pedicures, to the main branch of the public library, and to three movies (Brave, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, and The Odd Life of Timothy Green – all great).
Pretty toes!
Today was our baking day. I make no secret of the fact that I don’t enjoy cooking or baking or being in the kitchen in general. And considering we started in the morning, even wine couldn’t help. Thank goodness for coffee.
You can send me my medal any time.
We picked out four recipes for cookies: chocolate-chocolate chip, regular chocolate chip, ginger and vanilla. We didn’t end up with quite as many cookies for the freezer as I had hoped, but still, not a bad haul. Some for eating; some for freezing for school lunches.
Cookies!
We are still planning to fit in a trip to the Bonnechere caves and to see the whales at the Museum of Nature before September hits, but then alas, our best summer ever will be over and I will be heartbroken.
Not only did we do a lot of fun things, this summer, but I also managed to get on top of a few things. My girls have their school supplies labelled and packed into their backpacks. They have new lunch boxes (ordered online from Land’s End – love!). They have their school indoor and outdoor shoes, purchased before the stock was dwindled so they actually had their choice of colours and styles.
My ten-year-old is only about half a size smaller than me now. Next year I will get her hand-me-downs.
Also, the laundry is caught up on, the appointment to get our water meter changed has been made, the girls are registered for swimming and piano lessons, and they even have doctor, dentist and eye doctor appointments lined up. This never happens around here and it always feels like we are behind, never to get caught up.
So the girls are taken care of, and I am taken care of too. I spent a lot of time reading and writing over the last weeks, and today I registered myself for not one, but two writing courses through the continuing education programs in Ottawa. So it will be back to school for me too. I am so excited.
The only downside? I definitely do not get five weeks of vacation, and so my leave was taken without pay, though through income averaging, the bite out of my pay cheque is taken over the whole year which helps a lot. Still, we did some costly things this summer and so there is still catching up to do, even if it is of a different sort.
It was completely worth it. I hope your summer was awesome too.
I am a huge supporter of less-money-more-kid time. It is always worth it in the long run. I’m glad the three of you had an awesome summer!
I’m so sad for you, Finola, that your time off has come to an end. You did so much with Niamh and Beatrice, and you all will have wonderful memories.
Sounds just fabulous! I’m super happy for you guys. What courses did you sign up for?
One is a short story course, about building a story, and the other is about writing a novel (gulp!)
It sounds like an awesome summer of awesome! I’m not ready to be done with summer either; it seems to go by quicker every year
Your summer hiatus from work (even unpaid) sounds like it was fabulous and well worth it. What great memories. I am not at all ready for September – for the first time I remember, I could do with another few weeks of summer. Usually I am looking forward to fall by mid August, but this year we were all kinda surprised how fast it all went by – and how much there is we still would like to do.
So envious. Good for you for making it work to have that chunk of time off with your kids.
By the way, saw this today and thought of you: http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/the-ultimate-guide-to-writing-better-than-you-normally-do
Thanks, I loved your li.nk 🙂
That sounds awesome. We don’t have the unpaid leave option, although we do now have the choice to “buy” an extra week of vacation. So glad to hear you enjoyed your time, I can’t wait to do similar things with my girls. And they’re getting so close, too! I’m ready to wisk Meena off to Montreal so we can paint the town red – means that 20 months from now, I’ll have two little sidekicks ready for adventure!
Did you make it to Bonnechere? The whales? I keep meaning to visit the caves, let me know if you’re interested in a group outing.
Meantime, we need to do coffee 🙂
How great that you were able to spend so much time with your girls and get caught up on so much. Can’t wait to read more of your creative writing – hope you’ll share some of it here!
Hooray for the summer of awesome! I’m glad it was as awesome as you were hoping.
Sounds like a great summer and you were so productive getting everything ready for school! Best of luck in the writing classes!