July has been a blur. We spent the 4th of July at a friend's lake house. A few days after we came home, we boarded the plane for New Orleans. Just as I began to catch up on my sleep from that whirlwind trip, I began to pack for our most complicated weekend yet.
Mini and I headed to Milwaukee on Friday night, July 14th. Mini was scheduled to dance in competitions both Saturday and Sunday. Coach stayed home, and handled the final conference swim meet duty with Reg and Curly. That swim meet is an all day event that makes Irish dancing competitions look painless. Conference IS only once a swim season. Dancing is constant. That makes swim team more tolerable. By a landslide.
My niece is in a play in Milwaukee every year the same weekend as this Milwaukee Irish dancing competition. It's an eventful weekend, but we pack it all in. A swim meet, a dancing competition with a play sandwiched in the middle somewhere. I let Curly off the hook for dancing, since she JUST competed in Nationals. She spent Saturday focused on her swim strokes. My sister, Ann, is driving up to see the play Sunday, and she will deliver Maeve to the play.
I'm telling you . . . lots of moving parts.
There's more. On Monday when we are done dancing, swimming, and play spectating, Coach's siblings, their families, and his parents are all meeting at a resort at a lake in Wisconsin to celebrate his parents' 50th anniversary. The girls and I will stay over in Milwaukee Sunday night and drive the hour to the resort Monday morning.
In order for all of this to happen, I had to plan, pack, and prepare. Sleep at night, and then plan, pack, and prepare some more before I could leave for WI. There was food that needed to be made, laundry to be done, clothes to be sorted, and stuff that needed to be gathered. Games, snacks, sunscreen, beach towels, cameras, camera chargers. The only way I survived the preparations was list making.
In the midst of my adding items to my list, I reminded the kids of things to pack in their bags. It was overwhelming for me to get everyone ready to be somewhere when I wouldn't be home for two and a half days before their departure. I could only hope that Coach would make Reggie add the necessary underwear and socks to his bag.
Oh, the food. I cleared off two shelves in the fridge and loaded them up with the cold food that Coach needs to pack in our two coolers. I'm hoping that my post-it notes and large bold faced reminder pages spread across the kitchen table will mean that he doesn't forget anything.
In the midst of all of this, Tank walks into the kitchen on Friday shortly before he left for the caddy shack. 'Um, do I have clothes somewhere?'
What! Like, what?! The kids will say something like this to me, if there is a laundry basket of clothes tucked away somewhere (like the middle of the family room. But, hey why would they think to dig thru a basket of clean clothes?). I will direct them to which basket they might want to start looking in, if they have a missing jersey or pair of jeans. Sometimes the answer is 'it's in the dryer.'
This time, though, not the case. I have been nothing but on top of laundry in hopes that everyone has something decent to pack for the resort. I wanted all available options - clean and available. How would it be if the kids had no clean clothes to pack and Coach spent the day in a sweaty gym doing swim team duty, and no one bothered to wash the clothes? So, Tank's question made smoke come out of my ears.
Photo evidence. The room Tank shares with Reggie. Please note that 90% of the items on the floor belong to Tank. DO YOU HAVE CLOTHES SOMEWHERE?! The answer is YES, ON THE FLOOR OF YOUR ROOM!!!! PICK UP YOUR CLEAN LAUNDRY AND PUT THEM AWAY.
Seriously!
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