End-of-school blues. Or greens.

It's day one of summer vacation. AJ, the child I struggle to wake at 6:45 each morning of the school year, is already awake at 6:30 claiming he's "not so tired". And that's after letting him stay up late last night.

Doesn't it figure?

If I still scrapbooked, I'd probably be upset that I didn't get a photo of him yesterday on his last day of school. But, as mentioned, he normally moves quite slowly in the morning, and at the point I left for work, he was hardly ready for a close up. He did wear a nice outfit yesterday. His choice. he wanted "something nice, like for graduation."

Meanwhile, Sydney came home from her final day at Cool Kids with a very exciting souvenir: a small paper cup from which grass was growing. And she could not wait to plant it.



The challenge then became figuring out a location. There are plenty of spots in the backyard that could use some patching, thanks to Gus. But planting anything within the same fenced in confines of a dog that likes to dig would basically be a death sentence for Sydney's precious grouping of grass. And so we turned to the front yard. But as much as the kids run around playing baseball there, the grass' odds of success would not be good.

At last, we looked to the end of the driveway in an area of thin/dead grass cover. Perfect.

Under Sydney's watchful eyes, I dug a hole into what turned out to be mostly sand on top of clay. (Probably the reason for the existing ground cover's dismal showing.) We added garden soil and then replanted the precious bit of green.

But we couldn't stop there. Sydney faced quite the dilemma. She didn't want to get her hands dirty, but still insisted she wanted to help. And so we located the watering can and let her go to work.

It's now time for me to leave for work. AJ's in the top half of the second inning playing baseball on Xbox. I think his favorite moment of summer vacation so far came last night at bedtime. He asked me, "Do you have to work tomorrow?"

"Yup, I do," I answered.

In a highly sarcastic tone, no doubt fueled by all the Fridays when he had to go to school knowing I was at home with Sydney, he responded, "Oh. Isn't that too bad?"

As Jeff suggested, I think it's time we come up with a version of a honey-do list. We'll call it the AJ-do list.