Living Every Day Like Summer Vacation

My big boy Shane

With Father’s Day just around the corner, I enjoyed a little Mother’s Day in June.

Yesterday morning, my 7-year-old son Shane looked at me and proclaimed, “Momma, you are the best mom in the world.”

His sentiment made my heart sing, but I was a little bit caught off guard. Shane is a sweetheart but – with only a few months until he turns 8 – I’ve noticed just a little precociousness about him lately; None-the-less, he is such a good boy.

I know that it is only a matter of time before he is too cool for his Momma. So you can imagine how happy I was that I had the absolute good fortune of getting a lot of Mommy and Shane time this past weekend. 

On Saturday, we spent the early part of the afternoon doing two of Shane’s favorite things: eating In and Out burgers and hanging out at his favorite park.

Once our double doubles had been digested, we went straight to the Wilderness Park. Armed with a butterfly net and mesh bug container, we set off to catch us some bugs. However, our first order of business was to see if we could find our formal turtles Fasty and Slowy.

I posted a few months ago http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3679684799470258419#editor/target=post;postID=6560186619706425554
about our turtles that we acquired in Chinatown a few years ago. Well, our tiny little reptiles were so healthy and grew to such great proportions that we released them into the wild a few months ago.

Well, not necessarily the wild, but to the 11-acre Wilderness Park. Shane and I were so excited to find one of our turtles right there sunning itself on a rock on the shore of the pond.

Out of the hundreds of turtles at the park, how did we know it was ours?

Jason and Shane painted the shells of our turtles with nail polish, so we were able to locate one of our turtles, Slowy (the small turtle). I suspect Fasty – the bigger turtle – was hiding in the reeds because he was also such a scaredy cat when he lived with us.

Slowy at the Wilderness Park

It was so nice to see that Slowy was alive and sunning herself on a rock with another random turtle. She seemed right at home and it was much more humane than our 70 gallon tank which, believe it or not, was too small for the two of them.

We spent another hour or so trying to catch butterflies. I figured they would be too fast for us to catch, but Shane was good. Thank goodness not too good or fast, because he didn't actually catch one. I kept telling him we didn’t want to wipe the butterflies’ magic dust off their wings because then they wouldn’t fly.

Who did I think I was dealing with and did I really think he would refrain from trying to catch those beautiful insects?

 Uh, duh; that was the fun of it.

But the good news is that our bug catcher came back home empty and all the bugs were safe – at least for another few weeks.

After the park, we ran a quick errand and then we were home to get ready for Shane’s End of the Season Baseball Party.

We spent the entire evening at our local park, celebrating Shane and his team’s Double A Championship win. It was an amazing night and Shane pretty much slept with his trophies.

The next day, Shane had a flag football playoff game and my little man scored his first point of the season in a play that is similar to a field goal in regular football. Of course, mommy looked away for just a minute and missed it but, luckily, I’ve got the chance to see it again on the video replay.

After football, we dusted off Shane’s jersey and I took him to his good buddy’s Video Game Truck birthday party. For three and half hours, Shane was entranced by Halo and Lego Star Wars. I had to practically drag him out of the party because we had dinner plans with my hubby Jason, sister- and brother-in-law.

But, when we arrived at Kula Revolving Sushi Bar, Shane was once again fascinated. Despite the long wait due to its über-popularity, Kula has a conveyor belt that runs around the entire restaurant and you can pluck the sushi and other items off as they pass by your table.  I was even impressed and it takes a lot to get me excited.

Although Jason was with us for most of day on Sunday – with the exception of the party – it really felt that Shane and I had gotten some much needed quality time together.

As I tucked him into bed that night, I couldn’t help but be astonished at how grown up he’s becoming:  His legs are long and not as coltish as they had been; His hair is growing out and making him look a bit older; I had the pang in my chest that my baby is growing up.

I resolved right then and there to make sure I take advantage and enjoy every second of our time together. Before I know it, he’s going to be too cool for me and shake off any hand-holding or Mommy-Son PDA.

I told him that we were going to have the best summer ever and, as his eyes began to grow heavy, he asked, “Mom, why don’t you get summer vacation? “

As I turned out the light I thought, good question! But I said we will just have to make every day of our lives just like summer vacation.