Catching up with Instagram

Once again, I've dropped the proverbial blogging ball. The kids were both back at school this week, I had a birthday (29. Again.), It has rained incessantly, we were threatened with a hurricane, I had 8,890,914 forms to fill out and sign for the two schools, and had to send in a bunch of money to the aforementioned schools - lunch money, locker money, yearbook money...and so forth and so on.

Sadly, I have absolutely nothing exciting to share. If you've got kids, then you know how the week has been. Back to school time - Blech. 

Thankfully, no one has overslept so far. 

So anyway, I decided to share the photos from my cell phone - since I haven't been using the real camera. Hold on to your seats - the excitement might overwhelm you.

First, let's all give a warm round of applause for this little guy. He's been working overtime this week. I don't think I would have made it through the week without my dear, dear friend - Mr. Keurig.

Seriously, though. It rained this week. A lot. Torrents of rain. There was flooding in the streets - and at The Princess's school. Now if you have kids and you do parent pick-up - you know how it's always crazy the first week? Well, multiply that by about 100. The kids couldn't exit through the usual area at the front of the school because it had flooded. So parents had to try to fid a spot in the student parking lot, which was jam packed. I'm telling you, it was crazy!

This was our weather this week.

Every. Single. Day.

But today is sunny. And beautiful. Hooray!

Also, Tropical Storm/Hurricane Isaac seems to be heading further west and so doesn't appear to be a threat to those of us on the First Coast any longer. 

Which is just excellent.

Anyway, moving along with the review of the week...and completely out of order...

Here's The Princess heading out for her first day of her sophomore year of high school.

The Boy had some friends over. Just to hang out. There's nothing like walking in to a houseful of hungry teens to make a middle aged 29 year old mom feel needed.

Don't you love how everyone is a good sport about the mamarazzi, except for The Boy? He feels the need to make goofy faces every time a camera appears.

So, that was our week. Did anyone else have kids start back to school this week? 

Waking up and getting going before the sun is up.

Birthday flowers...still hanging in there!

Another miscellaneous assortment of nothing at all.

As I mentioned in my previous post, The Boy started his senior year of high school a couple of days ago. The Princess begins her sophomore year next Monday. So this week has still been a little bit of summer vacation...at least we've (except for The Boy) been able to sleep in a bit, and The Princess has been trying to work on her tan (whilst simultaneously finishing up her summer reading). But the week is flying by and reality is going to hit with a vengeance on Monday morning!

These past few weeks of summer went by so quickly that I didn't even realize it was happening, much less manage to get any wonderful photos...but I thought I'd rummage around and share a few that I haven't shared before just to give you an idea of what we've been doing around here.

And also because I don't really have anything else to say today!

The kids have both been hanging out with their BFFs along with other friends (and the girlfriend). I made these the other day to document the years of friendship between them...

The Boy has also been spending a lot of time on the dock...

I may be biased, but I think this little guy might be a teenager. It's all in the attitude, you know!

The Princess has had a few dance classes...

And we've stocked up on leotards and tights and had a pointe shoe fitting - since her old shoe was discontinued and we had to start from scratch with all the trying on and discussing of shanks and vamps and arches and boxes. Yes, it IS just as exhausting and confusing as it sounds. Also, expensive!

The Princess has also been "busy" making videos to One Direction songs with her bestie...(just as an aside, why The Princess is not in drama rather than dance at her school absolutely confounds me!)

The Princess has also been working on her driving skills. In completely unrelated news, I need to make an appointment to get my gray hairs (which seem to be appearing at an alarming rate these days!) touched up.

And finally, in an effort to be more frugal I've been sending the kids to do my shopping when we need bread or milk or whatnot (because I tend to "stock up" on things which we really don't need). I recently discovered that this is, apparently, not quite the hardship I thought it was. They certainly seem to get more enjoyment out of grocery shopping than I ever have!!

I promise to try to get all caught up on my blog-reading and commenting in the next couple of days!

The hiatus is over and The Boy is a senior. Yikes.

So...you may or may not have noticed that I've been taking a little blogging break. It actually wasn't intentional...the last few weeks of summer just became jam-packed with "stuff". "Stuff" which I can't really talk about because it isn't actually MY "stuff". But I've been making quite a few road trips and taking care of some, err..."stuff"...which had to be taken care of. Wow - that all sounds quite mysterious, doesn't it? Trust me, it's not. But, well, the "stuff" that needed to be taken care of has been taken care of, for the most part. And then, frankly, I was worn out. Exhausted. Elvis had left the building kind of tired. And there just wasn't any energy leftover for blogging.

So, I've been hibernating and trying to pretend that the summer wasn't ending and school and dance and carpooling wasn't about to start back up. And, naturally, our wonderful carpool of last year completely fell apart in the past couple of weeks which means that I really wasn't able to hibernate. It's kinda sorta fixed now, I think. And then all sorts of other fun things started piling up...like The Boy getting his senior picture taken...

That's right...I said his SENIOR picture.

Which is another thing that I had been in complete denial about. My son - my baby boy - starting his senior year. 

*GULP*

Oh sure, we've been visiting colleges and talking about schedules and SAT and ACT exams and so on and so forth. But somehow, it didn't really hit me until I saw that snapshot from the photography studio that he's a senior. This is his last year of high school. My baby boy is going to be leaving me!

So then I didn't blog because I was feeling completely melancholy and blue. Because the time just went by TOO FAST! It seems like only yesterday that he was just my little boy, bringing frogs and fish and snake skins and other creepy, stinky boy stuff into the house and getting dirty and kicking soccer balls around and watching The Crocodile Hunter.

When I look at him, I don't see an almost man.

I don't see a senior in high school.

I still see that little boy with the twinkling eyes and the gap-toothed smile...

It seems like we just celebrated another graduation...how on earth is it even possible that it's about to happen again?!

It seems as though it were only yesterday that he started first grade. 

Truly, I'm in shock. This happened so freaking FAST! 

And today was The Boy's first day of his senior year of high school. Not only am I mourning the end of summer vacation (which was much too short, in my opinion), but I'm struggling to accept the reality of my baby boy growing up.

And it's not easy.

It's breaking my heart...even as I urge him on to independence.