Halfway Through Summer?

Okay, so when did that happen?  One minute school was letting out and the next minute I blink and summer's half gone.  I said before that things had been pretty overwhelming and they did get significantly more so over the past month.

An older family member who had been seriously ill since the beginning of the year became critically ill, was hospitalized and was then transferred to palliative care for a couple of weeks before passing away.  It's been a rough time for the whole family.  Lots of time spent in the hospital, lots of stress, knowing that the outcome wasn't going to be good and less attention paid to a lot of other things.

Things are slowly getting back on track.  Dear Child has spent one week at day camp so far and goes back for her second week tomorrow.  The following week her nieces come back and all three girls go back to swimming lessons.

I got a big, brown envelope from the school in the mail the other day.  I was thinking that things were all under control on that front because I already bought DC's uniforms and handed in both a series of post-dated cheques for tuition and a separate one that only gets cashed next June if I don't put in at least 12 hours of parent participation at her school.  Silly me, I forgot about the school supply fee, the workbook/textbook fee, the field trip fee and at least one other fee of some kind.  Lovely.  Even better, they all have to be paid on or before September 1st, which is the first day of school this year (early, because all the High Holy Days come early this year, finishing at the end of September).  Since the kids will barely be in school through September they get to start on the 1st instead of waiting for the day after Labour Day.  Lest I forget, there will also be the hot lunch fee about a week after school starts.

I had intended to spend every other weekend and every long weekend at our house.  Needless to say, that hasn't happened.  I finally went for 2 days the other week, Sunday and Monday.  It meant taking a day off work, but I desperately needed to do some yard work and there's tons still left undone.  I hope to go again next weekend.