Haircuts, Hormones and Holidays

We are heading into the holiday weekend that I love almost as much as Christmas: Memorial Day! When I was a kid, I loved it because it was usually my birthday, plus my family always went to Lakeside, a local amusement park, for an annual party thrown by the hospital where my dad worked. Here in Northern Virginia thirty-some (ahem) years later, it has the same feel. Chase celebrates his birthday and we bask in the fried food, heat and motion sickness of Viva Vienna. It's great fun because you know everyone there, from school, church and all over the community. This year it's supposed to be uncharacteristically cool out (low 70s), so we're looking forward to it even more. As for the birthday, Chase had decided not to have a party, just a couple friends from the neighborhood to spend the night. But it has ballooned to SEVEN friends, as these things do, and I deeply apologize to the aunts who got the call this morning that he wants his cousins (boys only!) here too. My bad. In the meantime, it appears that ten is the new fourteen, as Chase is generally sulky, short-tempered and extremely OVER his parents all of a sudden. I'm praying this is temporary and not something that's going to last for the next eight years. We did manage to get his hair cut (after a big messy scene), but Cole is still holding out. And Caroline, much to her brothers' consternation, is officially on summer break. So that's good . . . I think. Ask me again in a few weeks.

And for myself: Cole reading one of my all time favorites, Shel Silverstein's Giving Tree, yesterday before school. I promptly grabbed my phone and texted it to Ashley, we both love that book so much.