Twas the Night Before School

School starts tomorrow, and I'm not sad about it. 

The backpacks and lunches are packed. The outfits have been chosen. The alarm clocks are set. Breakfast burritos are waiting in the fridge. Everyone has been given melatonin and sent to bed (we try to limit our melatonin use to special occasions - like first nights on vacations, Christmas eve, and the night before school starts). 

(Scotty was not given melatonin but was snoring by 8:57 anyway).

Since today was our last day of summer break, I wanted to make sure we did something a little fun... so I took Nicky to the orthodontist. 

But after that, he and I drove around to various food places to acquire free food through rewards points and gift cards. I got two free happy meals from McDonald's (I had to go to two different locations, and it was funny to add the Thor happy meal box from the second location to the Pokemon happy meal box from the first location while giving the employee a look that said, "Don't ask questions!") and two free kid's meals from Chick-Fil-A (I was only supposed to get one, but they gave me an extra - it makes up for the four times they've shorted me hash browns in a breakfast combo in the past three months. Things haven't been good at Chick-Fil-A lately). 

With lunch in tow, we headed to the lake for a few hours. 

My kids' favorite thing to do at this particular lake is "make poop." They dig in the sand until they find clay, and then they form poops and put them all over their kayaks (and sometimes on the slide at the playground, which I occasionally discourage but sometimes allow to see how it plays out). 

Everyone is going to school with a sunburn tomorrow. 

We have a tradition of doing a Back to School dinner as a family the night before school starts, so after we got home from the lake, Scotty and I served up cafeteria delicacies of chicken nuggets, mac and cheese, and fruit cups. 

I made a goal to not spend any money on this event other than food (which I have to provide for my family anyway), so I used up a bunch of stuff I had on-hand and was quite pleased with what I was able to come up with. I thought it would be fun to have some Back to School plates for my plate rack, but again, I didn't want to spend any money, so I decided to try drawing on plates with dry erase markers. It worked like a charm!

Now I'm just hanging out, sweating to death in my billion-degree house, waiting for someone to come tell me they have a stomach ache. If tradition holds, they will wait until I'm sound asleep and then the anxiety will roll in. 

Ten hours til the last school drop off.

But who's counting?

(Wink).