The school my kids go to is on a year round schedule. Not for any educational or higher philosophical purpose, but because there are absolutely too many kids that live inside the school boundaries to have them ALL fit inside the school at one time. See the Mormons have been commanded to multiply and replenish the Earth, and HOLY SHIT they are doing an awesome job of it. Most of the elementary schools in our district run on a 4 track system, where there are 4 groups of students or “tracks”, with 3 of those tracks going to school at one time. This means that about every 45 days my kids get 15 days off of school. Or in other words, we all barely become adjusted to a schedule and then it changes to NO SCHEDULE AT ALL and chaos ensues.
I actually like the year round schedule, and its not because I’m an insane masochist, but because I can’t imagine having my kids at home for three whole months in the summer going crazy with boredom after the first week. It’s what happens with every track break. They lay around like they own this place for about a week, and then all I hear for the next two weeks is I AM SO BORED, MOM! So at least they get to go back to school after those two weeks and I don’t have to come up with something fun and exciting for them to do EVERY day for three months. Cause that really would be torture, people. Really.
Yesterday these cute kiddies of mine started in on the I AM SO BORED bit, so I decided to take them to the Pumpkin Patch. It was fun, and the kids were so happy running around picking out pumpkins and dropping pumpkins and stepping in rotten pumpkins and tripping over pumpkins, that I would say Pumpkin Patch is a perfect off-track activity. It was a wonderful combination of some of their most favorite things to do in the whole wide world: 1) running 2)yelling 3)being outside 4) spending money.
However I am here to attest to what is absolutely NOT a perfect off-track activity, that being, after going to the Pumpkin Patch taking all your kids to Sam’s Club to buy salt for your water softener. Because, while it does contain 3 of the 4 desired elements listed above, it will also make you feel totally inept and wonder how you turned into that lazy and completely out-of-control parent that you HATE.
