Schools Out for Summer.
HAGS!! is the new acronym to hit elementary school yearbooks. I couldn’t decipher it on my own, I had to enlist the help of my 9-year-old to guide me through the elementary school vernacular. My thought was that HAGS!! was similar to WHAS UP?!?! Instead of saying HUGS!! you say HAGS!! Oh no. HAGS is simply Have A Great Summer. Of course.
Urbandictionary.com has some entertaining definitions and examples using HAGS in a sentence. I won’t go into great detail here and highly recommend you check it out yourself, but I will tell you that my favorite defined HAGS as an STD (yes, you read that correctly, sexually transmitted disease). HAGS could also stand for Herpes, AIDS, Ghonorrea and Syphilis. Now read your elementary kid’s yearbook and interpret all 37 HAGS references with the STD message. Fun to frightening in seconds flat.
No more pencils. No more books. No more teachers dirty looks. These are all things worth celebrating, but school out for summer for me should be celebrated for not having to wake sleeping children, pack lunches and no homework! Woo! My life just got easier. Except, now I have to entertain 3 kids so they don’t fry their brains playing video games all summer, fight like mad dogs or push me further into the well of insanity.
What are your summer plans? Here’s a newsflash in case you haven’t been paying attention – we’re moving to Spokane. Though moving is a big project, it isn’t all-consuming right now, nor will it be once we arrive. We’ll take it one box at a time.
We’re billing this summer as the “Summer of Adventure”. It could equally be named “Spokane, You Got It, We’re Doing It”. “Summer of Adventure” actually begins on Tuesday, before we leave, with our final trip to Disneyland. As annual pass holders, we have our fill of Disney often, but Tuesday, with the help of our adult daughter, the boys will be at Disney all day long. We’ll show up for dinner and take over for the rest of the night. (Smart).
Nothing says summer like a good road trip! We will be on the road and we will cover 1,237 miles but that is the beginning and end of “trip”. We’re moving, no sightseeing or time-consuming tourist attractions on the way up. Not much of an adventure? Yeah. Right. If that’s what you think, you’ve never travelled 20 hours, in a car, with children, not to mention our menagerie. Door to door in less than the 20 prescribed hours it takes to get there without losing our minds. Safety first, of course.
The Adventure picks back up when we arrive in Spokane at the start of Hoopfest, “the largest 3-on-3 street basketball tournament on the planet”. Check it out www.spokanehoopfest.com Spokane utilizes 42 city blocks for 456 courts on day one of this weekend extravaganza. We are definitely going to check out this action. The boys are already talking about forming teams next year.
That’s as far as we have planned. Knowing what we’re doing next weekend hardly qualifies a dramatic action-packed title like “Summer of Adventure”. Buying furniture doesn’t qualify either, yet it counts for me.. If you’re one of the kids, your biggest concern is when will the internet be connected? If you’re my husband, his plans include buying a boat which certainly lends credibility to “Summer of Adventure”. Buying a boat will be great for all of the lakes and summer fun in Spokane. I cringe at the thought. This will be our fourth boat since we’ve been together. Boats are a lot of fun, but they are a lot of work. There is no work sitting on the beach with a book where I am perfectly content. Just the thought of the beach and a book takes me to a happy place on a lake, at the ocean, or next to a mud puddle. With adventurous boys and a water-skiing husband that also loves to sail, we’re definitely boating this summer if not sailing too.
Bicycling, checking out the sites, entertaining friends and family, trying new restaurants and just absorbing our new surroundings will be adventure in itself. Our summer will be full of fun.
HAGS! Whether this is a wish for fun or catching an STD, I hope you have a great time doing whatever you have planned this summer! Make it count.
multi-hyphenated-me 