Its Almost Over

School that is..
Ali's last day is tomorrow. I'm sad for the loss of consistency that school provides throughout the year. She's sad that she will not be seeing her friends everyday.
Its hard living on a street with no other children. We are the center of widow lane. Not literally of course, but all around us are either Old couples, childless couples (also old) and or families with only teenagers. The closest kid Megan's age is two blocks away, and the closest GIRL Ali's age is about 8 blocks away! It makes it very hard for them to spend time with their Friends.
We have to set it up in advance and arrange to get them here or there.
I can't just send them on their merry way like our mom's did when we were growing up. Its too scary out there. I don't even let them play in the front yard unless I have my eye on them.
anyway Half of their summer is spent with Ex and his Mother (mostly the latter), so that keeps them occupied for some of the time. Its lonely for us.
The last few years, Taylor and I have arranged our schedules so that we would work the time that they were away, and have our days off on the days that we had the girls with us. I tried to make our time filled with fun things and scheduled all kinds of outings for us to go and do. I fizzled a bit half way through last summer due to my protruding belly and the heat, but I think this year we'll be back in business..It will be a little harder this year with Mattie, , but Cherie our old daycare provider agreed to take him for some of the time this summer so that we could work the same days and still have time off with the girlies..
Check out the cool crafty 'G' I made for Ali's teacher. Her last name is Giles. This was her first year teaching so I knew she didn't have many 'personalized' gifts yet.. I thought a big fun G would be nice to put in her classroom.
I so attempted to be crafty! it was actually a complete accident that it even turned out the way it is.