"What I Did On My Summer Vacation" — as if written by my kids.

The other day as I walked by my kids, who were, as usual, watching an episode of The Office with one eye and looking at something on another iDevice with the other one, it struck me that summer is almost over and this is pretty much what they’ve been doing for the past 60 days. 

Super impressive, right?

I imagined their new teachers asking them what they did over the summer and the only answer of real value that they’d be able to give would be, “Flossed.”

When I taught fourth grade (way back when cell phones were the size of bread loaves before we really knew what Clinton did with his cigars) I’d have my students write a letter on the first day of school telling me how they spent their summer.

Real original, I’m aware, but it gave me a little bit of insight into what kinds of kids my new students were by letting me know what they liked to do and how they spent their non-school time. 

So the other day I got to wondering what my girls’ letters would look like if they’d been students in my class.

And what I came up with sure as hell would have given me insight.

What I Did on my Summer Vacation

by my kids

This summer was awesome. I did a ton of cool things and learned a lot.  

In June I got a new SIMS game where you can make mermaids and go scuba diving in the ocean! I spent lots of time every day making new characters and watching them get mauled by sharks. It was super educational. Who knew that sharks are just as likely to attack a mermaid as they are a human?

As you can imagine, social media took up a lot of my time. I made sure to keep up with #selfiesunday, #mancandymonday, #transformationtuesday and #throwbackthursday every week on Instagram, and also found time to post lots and lots of photo collages of cute baby animals. I had fun making absurdly short and meaningless videos on Vine and Instagram, and even more fun becoming proficient at the app “VideoStar”, where I made a bunch of funny videos of myself singing along to my favorite songs. 

It was exhausting keeping up with the boys from One Direction and 5 Seconds of Summer as they made their way across the United States on their tour, but I managed to keep track of them 24/7 by following their constant Twitter updates. And even though I went to their concert and got to see them LIVE, I still found it necessary and an important use of my time to watch fuzzy YouTube videos and look at pictures that other people took at the concerts in different cities until my eyes bled.  

I also kept up with Desiree’s compelling and dramatic love life on The Bachelorette each week. I learned a lot about insincere and dishonest guys, tight abs, and that settling for second best is perfectly fine if the guy is offering you a four carat diamond ring. 

In mid-July our good family friends came to visit and my friend Abby introduced me to The Office. I was instantly obsessed! We watched most of the first season together and then I binge-watched the rest of the entire series in about three weeks. That’s 201 episodes! I was proud of my stamina and perseverance! 

I caught up on a lot of sleep this summer. Even though I stayed up until midnight (or after) practically every night, I slept in until 10 or 11 a.m. so it was fine. And the best thing about sleeping until almost lunchtime is that you can eat half a box of Reese's Puffs in one sitting and it counts as both breakfast and lunch! 

So as you can see, my summer was very exciting and productive. Other than having a totally fun time, I really learned a lot about myself: 11 hours is the perfect amount of sleep for me, I want to marry a guy just like Jim, and I take a really good selfie. 

Sigh.

As you can see, they’re gonna make a super positive first impression in a couple of weeks. 

*Disclaimer*

While everything in the above “essay” is (sadly) true, my girls did spend time doing a few other things this summer, like read a ton of books, tube on the lake with each other every weekend, write new stories as well as continue working on books they started writing last summer, hang out with friends (although that usually involved a screen of some sort) and, most importantly as next summer my 17yo will be flying the coop and going to college, they spent quality time with each other. And if that QT involves laughing hysterically at The Office together for hours on end, then that’s just fine with me. 

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