What I Learned on My Summer Vacation. Or Not.

1) That summer is no time to be learning things. The mamas here on 5 Full Plates are all not waving in the first week of summer, we are drowning it. We each have our own super great excuses for not being able to manage a single lima bean’s worth of MORE on our plates this week. We refuse to improve in any way for the next seven days, and we also refuse to be even remotely sorry about it.

All learning is hereby immediately suspended. We will each do a learnly wrap up next week, and then we will be on our summer schedule, which means every week two or three of us will check in. Come fall? We will start a new challenge, I hope a fitness one, as I, for one, am post surgically flubbulous and can’t fit in any of my pants. I now look exactly like my before photo from when I did the Better U program with The American Heart Association. Except I had better clothes. Or some clothes anyway. I got rid of all my higher size items as I was never going back. Brilliant.

2) To Just Say No. From Florida, state of my birth, comes the best reason to truly get off the hallucinogens, once and for all, that I have ever heard. It also features the best opening line for a news story that EVER HAPPENED: “The Brevard County doctor who was arrested for groping a woman while dressed as Captain America with a burrito in his pants will not go to jail.” You can read the rest here, if you need to, but really, what else do you possibly need to know? Well, there are things I need to know, but the story does not tell me. I really wish I knew what kind of burrito it was. I think beef and bean. Was it frozen? Or from a restaurant?

3) If you are severely organizationally challenged, the only way to make a summer chore chart for kids work is to make one of the duties of the chore chart to KEEP UP WITH THE CHORE CHART.

We are trying this method at my house, and here, five days into summer, the chore chart is still working. This is three days longer than the chore chart system I tried last year, so I feel moderate surges of hope.

Here’s how it goes: Each kid is responsible for doing their chores for that day. They are also responsible for finding a parent and getting confirmation that the chore has been done to a high standard. Only then can they check the chore off. By the end of the day all listed chores must be complete, and they are responsible for having a parent initial the chart for the day. Failure to complete any of these steps means no TV and no video games the next day, which means they have to play outside in the sunshine. Even when they lose, they win. It’s freaking genius!