Well would you look at that. NaBloPoMo ends and the well of creativity dries up. Not that all my NaBlo posts were particularly enlightening (”Smiling’s my favourite!” tee hee, it still cracks me up) but it did at least force me to keep the blog afloat.
Isn’t December the most insane month EVER? We are bucking our usual trend this year and haven’t yet begun our proper Christmas shopping. Normally we’d be about 90% done by now. Normally I’d be obsessing over lists and budgets and what I’m going to bake for such-and-such’s holiday get-together. Weirdly enough, that hasn’t happened so much this year. Probably because we’re doing a couple of bigger family presents this year instead of racing around like mad chickens buying this or that cool toy on sale. We’re not terribly big spenders anyway, but just not having to be ‘on the hunt’ so much over November and December has been refreshing.
Oh, but the end-of-school-year events are killing me. In Australia, we finish up our school year right before Christmas and have a 6 week break over what is meant to be the bulk of our summer (although the way the season is shaping up this year, we’ll still be sweltering into March…sigh). We return for the new school year generally in the last week of January, give or take a little for individual schools and states. Today marked the beginning of the Last Week. Traditionally, the Last Week is hyperactive to the core. I honestly don’t know how working parents manage - I stay at home and I’ve been struggling to get to all the school events and assemblies and morning teas these last couple of weeks.
I both love and hate this last week of school. I love it because Christmas looms and that means relaxation, good food, good company, no dawn o’clock wake up calls to get going on the school prep, lots of lazy days. I hate it because I’ve grown far too used to not having the kids underfoot during the day when school’s in and 6 weeks of living in each other’s pockets can take it’s toll. Usually Talented Hubby is able to schedule part of his annual leave during the summer holidays which again, has its good and bad points - he’s here (yay!) but he’s also HERE if you get my drift, LOL. Weekends are already like this (whether Daddy is working or not) but the holidays seem to revolve around a continual rhythm of food preparation to satisfy the other members of Chez Liz. I spend most of the time fantasizing about personal chefs and TH with a palm frond and grapes, LOL.
And I’m always kind of sad to see another year finish for the kids. They are shooting up like weeds (TH and I both think Master J will eclipse my height of 5′3″ in another 18 months or so…at age ELEVEN AND A HALF) and some of their friends will move on to new classrooms. Next year new friendships will form and old ones will move to ‘mere acquaintances’. The teachers do make an effort to retain one or two good friends for the kids as they move up to the next year level (in our school each year has at least 3 classes of the same grade) but it’s not the same. Next year will also see a new dynamic of Classroom Mums. There are always the core faithful, LOL - the Mum who’s always doing the readers, the one who always organizes the teacher gifts, the ones that kiss and drop faster than lightning, the one who’s not a Mum but a Dad and so stands out like a sore thumb - but there are new faces too. You get used to a particular group of parents the same way the kids probably get used to their peers - and then it all changes. Life is fleeting.
We’ve had a big year and an especially stressful six weeks. We’re looking forward to the break!
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