Summer

Well, I finally finished packing on Wednesday and turned in the key to my middle school classroom. Now I just have to keep my fingers crossed that everything makes it to the high school intact. I got a new chair about a month before the end of the school year and as silly as it may sound, I am worried about it showing up in my room in decent shape. The school is having senior students move everything and chairs on wheels in long hallways can be soooo much fun. I need to quit worrying and relax.
Yesterday I finally got to work out in my yard. I have a couple of little corner gardens near the gate to the my backyard that I weeded and planted with some new succulents. I am going to try to get another small area cleaned up today. By the end of the month, I may have the whole yard looking decent.
I also got online yesterday and reserved campsites for the Fourth of July weekend and for a long week at the end of August. The campsites are all at state parks which are a great value. The state park we will be at for the Fourth is only about 20 miles away, and not our favorite. But, it is close enough that my husband (who holds that we are too old to camp) will be able to drive out there after work on Friday and then drive home to sleep, and my sister can make it easily from where she lives. We can also pack up and come home if the weather is crappy or the natives are too rowdy (this campground has a reputation for attracting bikers).
I am most excited about the trip in August. We are going to start by camping up the western shoreline of the lower peninsula, then going up into the UP and spending a couple of days in Taquahmenon, and finally camping down the eastern shoreline of the mitten. We had originally intended to go up to the Keewenau peninsula for a couple of days, but it added about 14 hours of driving and we just won't have enough time. We camp with my sister and her daughter and the week near end of August is the only time we were all out of school. My son, who is now 20, really wants to go up to the top of the UP, to the Lake in the Clouds. I still have all of June free and the first two weeks of July, so maybe he and I can manage a road trip up there. I was even thinking about driving up through Illinois and Wisconsin, and then coming back down through Michigan.
There is also an archeological site in lower Illinois called the Cahokia Mounds that I would like to visit. I am looking into how we can camp our way there over a weekend.
Next year, we may even make it outside of Michigan and bordering states!
Mostly, I will be spending the summer boning up on pre-calculus, taking two more classes for my masters degree, finishing up projects at home (cleaning garage, painting living room), sorting through the boxes of papers (lesson ideas, notes) that I set aside all school year and brought home to work on and a lovely stack of unread/new novels by my favorite authors!
Adios.