Aspiring Annie: 2014

On more than one occasion this summer my husband and I have expressed the relief of no longer having to buy school clothes or supplies and to no longer have to plan things around school schedules. When we have been out with friends and they have voiced their concerns about standardized testing, school accountability, demographics, staff, bullies, etc etc... my husband and I have just exchanged smiles knowing that we are both thinking something along the lines of "been there done that and we are not going back"

So, no one was more surprised than me when this morning as I rounded the corner on my way to work I found myself tearing up as I saw a group of parents and children anxiously waiting at the bus stop. As I made my way through the neighborhood, on every corner there were children with their new clothes and backpacks, and parents snapping photos to commemorate the beginning of a new school year. By the time I got out of the neighborhood I was sobbing.

Where the heck did that come from????

Wasn't it just twelve hours ago that I was sipping a glass of wine feeling gleeful that for the first time in over twenty years I wasn't spending the night before the new school year packing backpacks or ironing clothes or running out to the grocery store for things to put in lunches? Now here I was having to redo my makeup before work because the realization that a season in my life had come to a close.

So with that epiphany, I decided to have a good old pity party for myself. I was ready to sit down in my stretchy pants and eat a bag of Oreo's while I waited for the grim reaper to come and take my old past my purpose on this earth self home to glory. But literally as I was typing this blog post, my daughter called me to tell me about her first day of school. This time as the teacher. It was nice to hear about lesson plans, class mascots, new faces and the first day down with many more to go. It felt good to listen to her share her day - kind of like she did back in the day but different. So maybe I'm not quite past my purpose. I may not be needed to shop for school clothes or pack lunches, but I'm always here to lend and ear to my kids on their first days or any other days they need me.

Now on to those stretchy pants and Oreo's.

Today I remembered my blog.

It started with my son showing me this picture from instagram.

(yes I know there is a watermark on the photo which indicates the photo was not actually purchased by the poster but I'm feeling sentimental so I'm choosing to overlook that)

Seeing this photo made me remember that I had a picture of these three ~~boys~~ young men back when they were still boys. Since I have had multiple computer crashes through the years, I could no longer find said picture on my hard drive, but I remembered that I had put it on my blog.

So since I had not visited my blog in two years I started to read through my posts and I realized I missed posting ( is it just me or does this all vaguely sound like the children's book If You Give A Moose A Muffin?) Anyways since two years would make for a very long and boring post, I will use visuals of the highlights.
So as indicated in the first photo, this happened: