A big thank you to everyone who shared their thoughts on my last post. I think it’s true that I’m feeling overwhelmed and under appreciated right now, and I believe having more discretionary income would ease some burdens. Also, it’s spring and we’re having to make hard decisions about how much childcare we can afford over the summer, and what traveling to visit family can look like. My son got into the much cheaper Rec and Park camps, but we’re putting our daughter in more expensive art camps, in the hopes that more formal training will help her get into the public fine arts high school she wants to attend. People evidently pay many thousands of dollars for private help producing portfolios and we don’t have that kind of money, so a few art camps will have to do. But even those camps cost $500-650 a week. So far camps this summer are running us about $3.5K. And air fare has gone up substantially, at least our flights to St. Louis have. Everything just costs more now, but ya’ll know that.
This weekend was jam packed. Both Saturday and Sunday were sunny! Hooray! I walked a lot Saturday and got in a short run on Sunday. Being out in the sun, even if the air was frigid, helped my mood immensely.
Saturday our son had a long play date so my husband and I went out to early dinner and drinks. We walked to the dinner spot, but we didn’t walk home because it was windy and cold.
Sunday we got to see a sneak preview of the new Dungeons and Dragons movie. We aren’t hard core D&Ders, but we play occasionally and we have been looking forward to the movie since last summer. It was going to be hard to fit a showing in next weekend (it comes out this Friday) but then my husband found a sneak preview showing on Sunday at a perfect time and we went for if! It was a ton of fun. We liked it a lot.
It was a nice weekend, and I had a lot of fun. I also didn’t get much done and am feeling stressed out because of that. But I guess you can’t have both a lot of fun and time to do boring stuff (like chores and grading). So now I go into this week a little less stressed for all the fun of the weekend, and a little more stressed for feeling behind.
Tomorrow I’m staying home with the kids. It’s their spring break but it’s not my spring break. I have mixed feelings about the times when our breaks don’t match up. I’ll probably write more about that later this week.
Glad you were outside this weekend. I am not looking forward to tomorrow’s wet. Today is very blue where I am. Wish it were less chilly however.
Congratulations on all the fun you had, work in a middle school especially, is simply always stressfilled. Hang in and Thank you for the pictures.
Dang girl, sometimes I feel like our lives are fairly similar, but posts like this make me realize they are SO different thanks in large part to where we live. Summer camps are completely not a concern here, most parents pick one or two to do (and it’s something like a week long soccer half day soccer camp for $300 or a couple week play program for the same) and that’s it. The plan for my kids beyond soccer and a play is literally to ride bikes around town with friends and alternate whose house they go to for lunch and screen time. That’s it. And it’s the same for everyone I know! Fine arts high schools? I honestly didn’t even know that’s a thing! Not disparaging it at all, but I guess the “up side” to having one high school in the town is that everyone goes there and there’s no crazy competing to get into it (AND it’s one of the top 10 high schools in the state – without any specialization). That sounds so stressful to have to worry about summer camps in regards to money and high school choices. Ouch!
At any rate, I will say flights is one thing we pay a lot more for from here ($600/flight has been standard for years, and we paid $1000/flight to see my family in MN over Thanksgiving last year). With that being said, I never regret the money we spend to travel or to see family. I’m glad you’re able to do it!
PS – beautiful photos of your run view and your cocktail!
That D&D movie looks like it’ll be a lot of fun.
JJ’s experience with summer sounds like my childhood. I went to one summer camp in third grade for a week and from then on, I was on my own! We also only had one high school in town so the simplicity of that was something I failed to appreciate as much as I would now.
Now, things feel so much more complicated for our kids. Our two are so much younger they can’t possibly do the “read all day on your own” thing I did, of course. We’re lucky that we should be able to get the kids into the same place for a month or so this summer. But if I were to try to piece together camps week by week like some friends need to do, whew. It would feel impossible.
Balancing family commitments and financial priorities can be tough, especially with kids’ activities that come with significant costs, like specialized summer camps. Just as martial arts training involves commitment and balancing time and finances, making these strategic choices for your kids’ growth now will likely set a strong foundation for their futures. Hopefully, the experiences and skills gained in these camps pay off in meaningful ways down the road.