Where we're at, and how we got here.
It's the day before elementary and middle school start up for the year. Usually by this time, I'm SOOOO beyond ready to send these kids back to school, but this year is different. This year I've already sent one off to college (Sam's living on campus but only six miles away so my adjustment has been rather mild). I decided to give my younger kids the summer vacation of their dreams and let them do literally nothing. No camps. No events. No sitters battling them with sunscreen to get them outside until they're wrung out and grouchy when their dad and I get home. I let Cullen & Maybe run their summer themselves, with a teenage babysitter coming in a few hours a day, a few days a week, to make sure they were sufficiently fed & watered & mopping up their bleeding eyes from their anticipated eight straight hours of Kindles, Minecraft, and X-Box. A weird thing happened though. They gorged on screens for the first few days, and then both announced that t...