Back To School & Jackson Family Summer Recap

BACK TO SCHOOL

IT’S FINALLY BACK TO SCHOOL TIME!!

I would totally be lying if I said I wasn’t excited for my kid to get back to school. While I have enjoyed spending majority of the summer with my 9 year old daughter going on 16. It’s time for her to go back. We need to get our scheduled life back and I need to figure out what my work from home life schedule will finally work out to be. I thought in JUNE it would be easy to get a new schedule but that wasn’t the case. I found myself feeling guilty when I had to work on photoshoots, and double the guilt when I had to edit and work on the back end of the photography business. MaKenna wanted friends to come over, she wanted to swim, she wanted to go places and to be honest I wanted her to be able to do those things that was one of the main reasons why I left my dental assisting job and decided it was finally time to have only 1 full time job! We did all those things we wanted to do, we just didn’t really have a schedule. If we wanted to go swimming we went swimming. If she wanted friends to come over friends came over. I just worked around all the craziness. If we played one day I worked the next. It all worked out!

We didn’t get to do everything I thought we would get to do, but this has been the BEST summer yet! This is the first summer that I got to spend majority of it with my daughter. We defiantly made up for last year in our pool. With her busy gymnastics schedule I remember only swimming in it once in JULY and probably none in AUGUST last year. It was also a cooler summer so that had a lot to do with it. I told myself then, that was going to be the last time that happened! So this summer she started off the summer with a sleepover with her school friends! That was a great start! She had a couple other sleepovers with her gymnastics buddies! We went to HOLIDAY WORLD!! It’s a privately owned amusement park and water park in SANTA CLAUSE, INDIANA. It is always CHRISTMAS in Santa Clause, Indiana! She went to INDIANA BEACH where she opened & shutdown the amusement park. She even surpised us and went on every single ride! I guess she has a little more dare devil in her than I thought. We went on a 2 Day trips to INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA where she got to meet and get autographs from Shawn Johnson and Simone Biles. The icing on the cake was the Carly Rae Jepson concert downtown INDY. Carly even touched her hand we were front row! That made her day. Both of the INDY trips were completely FREE! Except for our gas and food. How awesome! We took a weekend and went to DOWNTOWN CHICAGO! Her and her dad took sometime and went to the museum while I took that time and went shopping downtown Chicago. Enjoyed Chessecake at the amazing Cheesecake factory by MYSELF! YUMMY. Didn’t have to hear the hubby complain about how expensive it was! We love Chicago, it’s defiantly one of our top quick places to go. She took a week and went to her grandparents house, which was great for me! 🙂 She had gymnastics camp for a week and stayed with a buddy from the gym that week. We drove to Michigan one day and went to Silver Beach with my Bestie and her family!

Gosh I had forgot about all the things we have done. I’m sure I missed somethings this is just what came to my mind while writing. I can’t believe I kinda felt bad thinking she didn’t get to have a fun filled summer.

Last Wednesday was her first day back to school and it was a new experience for us. This is the first year she will be riding the bus to school and from school on non-gymnastics days. We had no idea how early the bus would come, so those first days was kinda crazy! I had big plans of getting out there early taking some first day of school pictures! But reality the bus came 20 minutes earlier then when they said it would come. As we were walking out to the end of the drive way the bus was pulling up. I literally snapped 3 really quick pictures and she was GONE just like that.

We haven’t missed the bus yet. It’s still early! But the second day was kinda close. I have had MaKenna set her alarm and get herself up. I know some would think i’m crazy. Thats OK. But I want her to be Independent and it can only help her. She doesn’t know but I then set my alarm 15 mins after her alarm. I go check when my alarm goes off to make sure she has gotten up. The second day she must have turned it off and went back to bed! She was rushed & irrated that day! She makes her own lunch and get her breakfast. Independence, Indepence, Independence! My dad did a lot of good things right when he raised me and the top of my list was the independence he instilled in me. It very much my personalty and the way I am but his direction defiantly helped.

This is the first full week so today I got up early and made my baby breakfast and packed her lunch for her because she wasn’t feeling to well. I think she was rather surprised! I hope as the day goes on she feels better.

Here’s to a great School year!!!