School's Out!!!

                            

Remember the Last Day of School?  It was always a great day.  You had survived another year.  Teachers could careless what you did, no work took place, parties abounded, and freedom was just around the corner.

Today is the last day of school for my kids.  Cheyenne is so excited. 

 I am nostalgic about those days,  I didn't have any worries.  I rode a bus from Eagar, AZ to Vernon.  The last day of school our bus driver would stop somewhere, our favorite stop was Tastee Freeze, and we would get a treat.  We would also usually have a water fight on the bus the last day.  It was a wild ride home.  But Aunt Toots was a great sport.  She seemed to understand that we needed to let off steam.  

I look back and wonder how we never got into an accident because we were often so wild.  I even remember our Aunt Toots getting a speeding ticket.  She was awesome!  

 I was looking forward to lazy afternoons (the moment you finished your chores until Dad got home).  I say afternoons because in the summer we(all of the older siblings)  had to hoe weeds in the bottom of the field before it got too hot.  We were not the most diligent workers.  Dad assigned each of us an hour hoeing each day.  We found that if we took our time walking down to the bottom of the field that would use up 15 minutes and then we would hoe the very minimum amount of time and take our time walking home so that we were gone just an hour.  I am sure my parents were aware and we were not as sly as we thought, but hey we were young.  So the afternoons, after all of our chores were complete we could do pretty much whatever we wanted, many times that meant curling up with a book or going to Grandma's to watch TV or going and playing with the cousins down the road.  I was not always the best at completing my chores quickly without some incentive.  Some days chores didn't get all of the way done until 4pm because Dad always got home at 4:30pm so we had better be done before he got home.  Often when he got home we were then given the "privilege" of helping Dad with whatever he say fit for us to do.  As a kid I wasn't always thrilled about the chores but looking back I am so grateful for them, I learned to do so many different things and I learned that I can do anything: milk cows(even with long fingernails), muck corrals, skin a coyote, pluck turkeys, butcher a cow,  cut up and package and elk, can vegetables from garden, plant, irrigate, build a fence, dig a post hole, dig a trench for water lines, brand cattle, safely cross an electric fence :) (those of you who have had the electric fence experience now the value of this), chop wood, hunt squirrels, and many more useful things.  I don't really get the opportunity to use these skills now but the way the world is going who knows I might be really glad I have them. :)

I guess I should return to what I originally started to post.  Yeah school is out!  I no longer live on a farm so the summer will shape up differently:  

We will go to the mall alot.

We will go Ice skating to escape the heat.

We will go to work with Dad.

We will travel and make new memories on the road.  This is my very favorite.:)

We will attend Granny's 90th Birthday party.  Yeah!!

We will go to some Diamondback games.

We will go see "My Fair Lady" at Gammage.

We will hang out with our friends.

We will go camping.

Oh and I forgot, we will organize closets.  :(

We will attend a lot of swim meets  and basket ball games.

So Bring on the Summer we are excited and ready!