For the Last Time

We spent the weekend getting ready for school. It was tax-free weekend so we bought all the supplies as well as clothes. With all the sales and the added bonus of not paying the 10% tax, it wasn't too bad to buy for all three kids.

This will be Mr. C's last year in elementary and S's last year of high school. So we are having a lot of "lasts". M was telling S tonight that this is the last time she'll have to go through the "sucky first day of school stuff". S was quick to point out that she'd still be in school next year, just somewhere else. I had to leave the room to cry. What a wimp!!! I better suck it up.

It seems like just last week that Smarty was starting kindergarten. I don't feel like I'm done with her yet. Does she know enough to survive "out there"? I remember when I only let her watch PBS. I was determined she wouldn't eat junk food or drink pop. Well, she doesn't drink pop, but that's her choice, not because I stuck to my guns over the years.

I usually only relate the wonderfully glowing reports on my kids. I do this on purpose. What mom wants to accentuate the negative things their kids do? But when they do make mistakes I wonder what I could have done to make them more perfect and less likely to screw up. This weekend S got a speeding ticket. I have never had a ticket so I was pretty upset. But after talking to everyone today and realizing that for most people speeding tickets are common, I was a little less upset. Still, this summer a boy who is two weeks younger than S was killed in a car accident, caused by speeding. So I think that it's reasonable to expect her to drive carefully. How do you get them to really understand this? Sure she was shook up when the cop pulled her over. But after talking to all her friends and hearing their stories, she's accepting it as a normal occurance. I just hope that after she gets done with driving school she'll be a better driver.

Well, now you know my kids are not perfect. And I'm not a perfect mom. And school starts tomorrow. I could sit around and be depressed about it all, but I'm going to go hiking instead.