Top priorities this past week:

• Summer School Registration
• Garden
• Laundry
• Cleaning
• Graduation party planning

Caring

Oh my goodness, summer school registration is cutthroat in our district.  I arrived thirty minutes before the doors opened to the counseling center and the line was almost going out of the front door of the school.  I was successful in securing Nathaniel a spot in the classes he’ll take over the summer to open up the rest of his schedule to accommodate four years of band in high school.  Whew!

This week has felt like it’s been all about Nathaniel!  He came down with something Monday night and has spent the entire week just hanging out with a 103-104˚F fever.  I ended up taking him to the pediatrician on Wednesday because he was looking really awful, even for being sick, and they tested him for a ton of stuff.  All the rapid tests came back negative, so we’re waiting on cultures.  This has been a rough illness.  I made Michael stay home from work on Friday so someone could be with the boy while I was at work because I was worried about him. Thankfully, his fever broke on Friday and he was feeling a lot better, so he could join the marching band in their last parade of the year on Saturday.

Gardening

I put in a huge day in the garden on Monday and cleared the weeds out of two big areas of the garden.  This made my back extremely unhappy for a few days, but it was worth it.  I also planted a few of my started seeds—zucchini, summer squash, slicing cucumbers, pickling cucumbers, cilantro and a lot of marigolds—and direct sowed some bush green beans, more cabbage than we’ll ever need, zinnias, cosmos and some more sunflowers that the slugs already ate.  Clearing out weeds helped me find a number of slugs so I could send them to their eternal torment of an afterlife.

It’s so fun to see things coming up and blooming!  The peas are doing well, the nasturtiums are definitely coming along, and the radishes and lettuces are starting to gain some steam.  The carrots are slow starting and slugs keep getting my sunflower sprouts, so I’m keeping an eye on those crops.

Clothing

Some laundry has been done, but not the amount needed to truly make a difference.  I did wash Rachel’s choir dress, so it’s ready for whenever she needs it. 

Cleaning

I did a good job on getting the kitchen reset and the girls have been doing a pretty good job at maintaining it.

All my birthday stuff is cleaned up.

Celebrating

I took it a little easier on a few days this week just to make sure I fully recovered from the stress of the prom dress crunches.

I’ve addressed and mailed about half of Renaissance’s graduation party invitations.  I really hope people remember to RSVP.  It’s so nerve-wracking to depend on RSVPs.  I once received zero RSVPs for one of my kids’ birthday parties, so I made plans to do something else so my child didn’t have to wait around at home for no one to show up.  I left a note on our door that said we’d received zero RSVPs and so we had made other plans, and came home to wrapped gifts left on our doorstep.  I know I was in the right with my actions, but I still feel terrible about it.  It’s not hard to RSVP, DO IT.  I even made it super simple and put a QR code on the invite.  I am still terrified that I’ll get three RSVPs and then eighty people will show up.  I think this will be a situation where I will definitely have to phone around two weeks before the party and nail down the RSVPs myself because food-wise I could be in a lot of trouble if I don’t have a definite head count.  People just always make you feel so pushy and high-strung when you do that, but what else should they expect?  Ugh, this is one of my soapbox topics.  Just RSVP, people.  The same day you get the invitation.  We all have our calendars on our phones, so we already know whether we’re available or not.  Yes or no, I don’t care; I just need to know how many people I need to feed.  RSVPs save the sanity of the hostess.  Be kind to the hostess.

I’ve almost got the menu planned out; I just need to check in Ren to see how involved she wants to be with food prep so I can decide on the desserts.  When you have an aspiring pastry chef in your family, their involvement greatly influences what you offer for desserts at a gathering.

Decoration plans are good and supplies should be arriving soon.  I need to come up with some activities as well, mostly to keep people’s younger children occupied.  Space might be at a premium, though, so judicious planning is needed.

Community

I don’t like to publish where my kids are going to be ahead of time because that seems unsafe, so another thing we had on our plates this past week was the Rhododendron Parade. It’s quite the drive from where we are and we invite our middle school’s eighth graders to also participate so they can see what all the fun is about in the hopes that they’ll continue with band in high school, which meant, for the only time ever, Nathaniel marched in a parade in the same band as Renaissance.

In years past the eighth graders have also gotten to wear a high school marching band uniform, but the decision was made in the days leading up to parade that we were going to stop doing that this year, so my hopes of a picture of Nathaniel and Renaissance in matching uniforms together was dashed. Sigh. Our little school district is growing rapidly and it costs $22 to dry clean each used uniform at the end of the year, which hasn’t been that big of an expense in years past, but we had forty eighth graders this year, which would have added $880 to the bill and that’s a pretty big expense for such a small amount of wear.

Luckily, though, we decided to open up the “Band Gear” store to the eighth graders ahead of their freshman year so they can have band swag before the football games start in the autumn, and we were able to deliver their new band gear to them at the rehearsal prior to the parade, so many of them were wearing those items, my son included. Adorable.

I really enjoy being involved with our band program and am so thankful that the booster president approached me at tip-off two years ago to see if I’d be interested in helping out. It’s been a great way for our family to spend time together and serve together. It’s sad to see Renaissance’s band days come to an end, but we still have four more years of Nathaniel in band! And I’ll be dragging our family along for the ride the entire time because I was elected to be the band booster president this next school year. Get ready for even more band booster craziness, y’all!

We have a big end-of-the-school-year BBQ at a nearby park after the parade, and I was able to get some really photos of the kids and even one of Michael while we were there:

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It was a good and busy week, thankfully, and I hope to keep pushing forward and getting everything put back together in the house.  There’s so many good things coming up in the weeks ahead! What an exciting phase of life! See you next week!