School's out for the Summer!

I was slipping off Emily's water wings at the city pool this afternoon and I had to smile.  Just like that the stress and craziness--the extra time and hours and worry and prep and late nights and early mornings--slipped away into the past.  It's summer!  I'm on vacation!

Although school was over for the kids last Wednesdays, we teachers had to work Thursday and Friday packing up the classrooms, taking inventory, etc.  Even today I went in for about five hours to do some final wrapping up and take stock for next year.  But after a hot drive home from Granada between 2:30 and 4:00, when I slipped on my bikini and hit the cool water of the pool, I realized summer is really here.  It feels so good.

Angelines and I just finished watching an episode of a new TV series we've found on Amazon, and I was about to follow her to bed, but then thought better of it.  What better way to really treat myself on this first day of summer break, than to sit down and blog in the darkness of my living room?

Work details are best left for offline chats.  Thankfully, I'll be seeing most of you in just a few short weeks and I am sure we'll have plenty of time over coffee or wine or delicious food to catch up on the nitty gritty.  Suffice it to say, I have had zero time and less energy to keep up with my blog.

And as is so often the case when one is running on empty, the day after our last official day at work, I got terribly sick. My throat was swollen and sore and I was even covering myself with blankets on the couch even though the outside temps were up near the 100's (and no, we don't have AC).  Sunday, Angelines talked me into going to the ER and this time a very kind doctor immediately prescribed antibiotics although I was unsure if I'd actually had a fever (Do you all remember the wackoo back in January who refused to treat with more than ibuprofen for lack of fever even though my tonsils were the size of golf balls and riddled with puss pockets?).  On my third day of antibiotics today and I do still need the ibuprofen for the pain, but am feeling much better.

I also wanted to get in a quick post before tomorrow because we are meeting up with my childhood best friend's brother and his family who are here visiting Spain!  We're going to go to the Parque de las Ciencias in Granada and spend the afternoon/evening together. I am so excited to see them.  Don't get me wrong, I love when my parents visit, but we are fortunate enough that their visits are frequent and therefore slightly less "eventful" (not for Emily, of course!).  Anyway, it's just so fun to think of sharing a bit of my life here with friends from home whom have never visited us here, especially since one of their girls is just a bit older than Emily and they remember eachother from our last visit to the US. :)  I do love playing tour guide!

Other news: Emily has finally taken the leap toward swimming--she dunks herself underwater.  She has been terribly averse to getting her face wet and would refuse even to blow bubbles in the water, much to her mothers' chagrin.  Angelines has been especially worried and insistant that this year she MUST learn to swim, that she's getting too old to not know. While I do agree to an extent, I am a firm believer that children have their own developmental schedules and timetables to fulfill...and so far I haven't seen the need to push her with swimming. 

As it turns out, yesterday she was playing about in the little city wading pool with lots of other kids and watched a few of them dunk underwater.  She turned to her mama and said, "I can do that!" ¡Voila!  She was showing everyone who'd look!  And then she even dared to go in the big pool without her water wings on!  She's not acutally swimming yet, of course, but just that she's feeling comfortable enough to do this is a huge change.  I am sure that she'll be dog paddling by the end of August (earlier if her mama has anything to do with it!). 

She was so excited about taking off her water wings that she was shouting at everyone who was near us, "Mira! Con no manguitos!" --Look! With no water wings!  The English translation sounds okay...but in Spainsh it's completely awkward not to use the preposition "without" sin.  It was pretty cute and got lots of laughs.

So here's my summer kick-off post.  I will be online a lot more now, I promise.  I do miss writing on here when life gets so hectic.  It really is calming to sit down and put words on the screen, especially when I know you all are somewhere out there reading them. ;)

Happy Summer!