Where's the beads?

I've had some emails from folks wondering what I'm doing?...What's up?...Where's the beads?

Simple. There are no beads.
I'm not working.

I'm pretty sure that a goodly portion of you know what it's like just before summer vacation ends. The frenzied rush to the finish line - the scramble to get everything inventoried and organized. What do we need? What do we need to get rid of? What fits? What fits but that we absolutely refuse to ever be seen wearing in middle school?

And I'm like that, too, sort of. But, though I'll deny it until the bitter end, I always get a little touch of the weepies at the end of summer. Those children drive me crazy and half the time I'm wishing they were sitting in a classroom elsewhere from me, but I do recognize the rapid passage of time. I know that by next summer, many 'favorite' things and activities will have fallen by the wayside. Grown out of.

Forgotten.

So I try to appreciate this undiluted together time with my kids as much as possible. I try as hard as I can not to be one of those moms that ruins the last few weeks of vacation by constantly reminding the kids that "Summer's almost over. Better enjoy it" or "We have to get back on a schedule so no more staying up late and having 'slumber parties' in the family room every night" or "You're going to be so busy with school pretty soon that you'll wish you hadn't wasted your summer sleeping until noon."

No. Instead, we've filled our last weeks of unscheduled time playing with friends, making homemade ice cream sandwiches and having 'night swims'. We've stayed up really late, eaten pizza for breakfast (I suppose it's technically brunch at 11:00) and played as many video games as we wanted to. We've gone to the beach, we've gone to the movies. We've caught baby lizards, ditch tadpoles and tons of fish. We've hatched butterfly cocoons, we've made soap and we've played super heroes and Dolphin Adventure for hours.

Oh yeah, we've had some other stuff going on, too.

In a move that was obviously fueled by some sort of early onset empty-nest syndrome, I agreed to let the kids get bunnies. They've always wanted them and somewhere in the back of my mind, I suppose I have, too. So we made a trip to the bunny farm.

Meet the bun-bun sisters, Violet and Blackie. Aren't they lovely? And very well mannered.

Unfortunately, the bunny farm was also the puppy farm. Meet Titus. He's one of a kind. And that's all I have to say about that.

So this is why there have been no new beads, no tutorial available even though it's been finished for nearly a month, and virtually no contact with the outside world. I am not working.

Until tomorrow.

Because today is the last day of summer vacation. It's over. I stood on the patio this morning, drinking my coffee and watching the sun rise. I looked around at the empty juice packs tossed carelessly beside the lounge chairs, the faded, half-deflated pool toys (so awesome just a couple of months ago), the rock village and pyramid built and abandoned in the flower bed 'jungle' and I felt almost overwhelmed by a sudden rush of emotion.

My son is in second grade now, in an upstairs classroom at the end of a seeming maze of hallways. My daughter is in middle school. Middle School!!! I highly doubt she'll be wanting to play any Ocean Rescue Dolphin Adventure with her baby brother and her mommy next year.

Summer is over.