This morning my youngest asked me how many more days of school she must endure, and the answer was 12, including today. The older two have just five more days of classes, then exams, then they are done. It doesn’t sound like much, does it? And yet it always seems like FOREVER away, for both them and me, at this time of year.

Considering the longest day of the year is next week, and it gets light now in Ottawa by like, 4:30 a.m., we are all struggling to limp over the finish line. I think my youngest, age almost-12, is finally hitting the mark where she is capable of sleeping in. She’s been getting up at 5:30 a.m. (or earlier) since she was like, three years old, and for the past two days in a row now I have had to wake her up for school, which is BANANAS. Meanwhile, the other four of us are falling asleep on the couch at night and sleeping through our alarms in the morning and everything just feels sluggish, like we are running on fumes.

For a while I have been thinking I should record our daily schedule, because I did that a few times when the kids were little and it’s fun to look back now and remember when they would all pile into bed with us at 6 a.m. on the nose (fun NOW, not as fun THEN). And it seems, if my youngest is going to start sleeping in all of a sudden, I should do it, as I will miss the current routine. It’s nothing fancy; basically, I get up around 6:30, then Little Miss Sunshine joins me downstairs in the kitchen around 6:45, and the two of us have some pleasant, getting-ready-for-the-day hugs and chit-chat until she has to get dressed around 7:20. Then she’s off to school, and by the time she leaves the Captain is up and eating his traditional banana at the kitchen table. There’s a bit of a rush when Sir Monkeypants gets up and has to drag Gal Smiley (NOT a morning person) out of bed and then everyone runs around grabbing lunches and is out the door by 8:50 or so, when I can make a cup of tea and organize my work day and settle in.

It feels so normal and regular, sometimes I have to remind myself that someday I’ll get up and it will just be quiet and lonely in the morning and WHY would I remind myself of that, SIGH. But perhaps that time is sooner than I think, and it’s best to prepare.

Speaking of bittersweet sadness and memories, I have officially finished guiding, yay! I expected to have mixed feelings and maybe even feel kind of sad about it in the end, but NO. I have joyously moved on. Don’t get me wrong, it really was a wonderful experience and I learned a lot and I will miss the girls in our unit. But oh, the GLORY of having free time again!

And just in time for summer, in all its non-lunch-making beauty. Sometimes I wonder if the studies that show that a long summer break is a bad thing are right, and we wouldn’t feel so burned out in June if we went to a more modern, non-agricultural schedule that involves several 2-3 week breaks throughout the year instead of the long summer off. But then we get here, and I imagine the joy of long, warm days with nothing much to do but eat popsicles and ride bikes and read a book in the cool of the basement, and even though I personally have to work, I still feel the excitement that comes with the promise of a long break, and I don’t want to give that up.

So let us embrace summer in its current state, and celebrate the joys of the current daily schedule, and revel in not having any girl guide planning to worry about, and pour out a lemonade and just BE.