The End of Summer

I think I still have a few more years before my kids really understand the difference between the school "year" and summer vacation, but today I was compelled to celebrate our last day of summer. I wanted to take the kids to the water park, but I also wanted us to have a nice lunch with grandma and do a little bit of back to school shopping. Unfortunately, because of the hours of the water park, we only got to do lunch and shopping. Dylan may not appreciate it now, but I'm sure that in about 10 years, she'll choose shopping over a water park every day of the week.

We drove over to Kohl's hoping to find that special something for the first day of school. In my mind, we never found the "it" outfit perfect for the first day, but in Dylan's mind, we found plenty of perfectly pink choices. How could I resist when each item was less than $2.50?

After that we headed down the street to Ross and shopped a little more. Again, the pickings were slim, but we found a cute pink and white striped shirt that would be perfect with a pair of shorts she already had at home. We met Grandma at Ross and headed over to lunch.

If anyone asks Dylan where she likes to eat, she gives two answers: Sonic and Paradise Bakery. Lucky for me, we had decided on Paradise Bakery the night before. We had a fun lunch with Grandma and ate cookies too. It was a great way to end our summer.


The rest of the day was spent preparing for the first day of school. Dylan and I decorated her All About Me poster and she went around the house collecting a few items for Show 'n Tell. I spent the better part of the afternoon trying to make them my vision of perfect before I realized that this is all about Dylan. Not all about who I think Dylan is.

If she wanted to use random colors on her poster that didn't coordinate with the paper she had chosen, it's her artistic prerogative. After directing her to choose a few toys that I thought were perfect choices to showcase who she is, she surprised me and found the most perfect choice of all to add to her bag. And more than that, she also decided that she only needed to take these perfect three items, and not the five she was allowed to take. My little girl knows who she is, knows what she likes and isn't afraid of it. I sure hope she stays that way.

Coming up tomorrow: her second "First Day of School."