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Our Memorial Day Weekend and End of the School Year

Hey All,

It’s almost halfway through 2023. Crazy right?

The school year is over for Preschool Nugget and he is currently enrolled in “Summer Camp” for this week and next week at his preschool. Then he is on summer vacation. Mr. Man has 3.5 more days of 1st grade, then he will be on summer vacation. Yay for the boys! Yay for Katie too, but also there is a certain amount of work for Katie involved in changing over to a summer schedule. While I like to leave spaces in the summer for relaxing and unplanned time, there is a lot of summer time real estate to figure out what we would like to have happen. I am the type of person who needs some structure or nothing will happen and I will go a crazy but if I have too much structure in my time, I chafe.

Still, it will be fun to think about summer.

This past weekend we celebrated the Memorial Day weekend by not doing much of anything solemn. I am not being glib here. I appreciate the solemness of Memorial Day weekend. I believe we should have a space and time where we contemplate the lives of those who lost their lives for us to have our freedoms. When I was in grades 8-12, I probably attended between 8-10 Memorial Day Parades and cemetery ceremonies as part of the high school band. We had one parade and cemetery ceremony the day before Memorial Day in a neighboring town and the big parade, so to speak, in our small town on Memorial Day.

When I was in 11th grade, I even played “Taps” at the cemetery at both ceremonies that year. I really didn’t want to and even tried to talk my way out of it with my band director, but as a rising 12th grade trumpet player, I was was my turn. Now that I am a grownup, my father sometimes reminds me around this time of year that I did played “Taps” at the cemetery once-upon-a-time ago and in retrospect I am glad that it happened. I proud to be part of that tradition.

Someday, I would love to take my children to a Memorial Day Ceremony. My local park has one and I see the signs every year and think that I will take the boys, but it has not quite happened yet. If I were being honest with myself, I would remember that they are probably still too young to really appreciate what would be said or done. Someday we will go. Then I am sure they will also want to stop going not long after they are old enough to go.

In any case, we had a restorative Memorial Day weekend. Life was so fast paced in May. Mr. Man had a first grade music concert at school and a field trip as well as Playday and a Hawaiian themed dance. Preschool Nugget graduated from preschool and had art show. He had to have some additional testing for his IEP that required bringing him in to his future elementary school and talking to people he will work with next year.

But it is official: Preschool Nugget is almost a kindergartener. He will be beginning school in August 2023. What a big boy! He had so much progress this past school year and we are very proud of him and so thankful for all the wonderful people he has worked with in the past year at Assumption Preschool.

Here is a sign that Mr. Man made for the Coopersburg 5K which we as a family cheered runners on at this past Saturday. (Nobody in our family ran in it this year). It says “Punch here for more power.” I think that parents and teachers can all mentally punch this sign since you all made it through May.

As the caption under the Star picture indicated, last Saturday, we left our house bright and early to cheer runners on at the annual Coopersburg 5K. Mr. Man made a cool sign. We stood of a corner not far from our house, and cheered as the runners ran past. Some taped the sign in appreciation and to get a little boast of power for their run.

Here we are cheering on runners at Coopersburg’s big race. I am not in this picture but my coffee cup is.

After the runners ran past, we planned to go to another spot along the race route and cheer people on there. However, while we walked past the center of town where the race concludes, we saw one of Mr. Man’s close school friends and her family.

This is the area near the center of Coopersburg where the 5K race concludes.

So we chatted with the EmiLou crew, as I will call Patrick’s friend’s family, and when they decided to get ice cream from a food truck at 8:20 in the morning, we decided that was a good idea for us as well.

Nothing like an ice cream and a bounce house before breakfast. Coopersburg doesn’t have many events but I must say that when they do something they pull out all the stops.

Later on Saturday, we visited our local pool for our augural visit. Then Mr. Katie made burgers and French fries and we finished our day by building a campfire in the backyard and sleeping in the camper.

Before it was dark enough to have a campfire though, the boys and I engaged in a campground tradition (even though we were camping at home) where we walked around the surrounding area to see what everyone else was doing. One of my favorite parts of camping is walking around the campground to look at everyone’s camp setup.

People weren’t doing much of anything in our neighborhood and weren’t really out so the boys felt that they should climb this mulch pile that we encountered on our walk.

When the boys climbed this mulch pile, they were truly getting in touch with their campground personalities. Mr. Katie and I like to joke that people at campground playgroups are a wilder crew than the people who frequent our local suburban parks. I was kind of proud that they climbed the pile and played in the playground for a minute, but not so proud that I let them do it for very long. I may try to pretend that I am a “bad girl” but honestly I am goody-goody deep down in my heart of hearts. Still, I loved that they were in touch with that part of themselves since we were “camping”.

Then we came back home to Mr. Katie and our campfire.

Here is Mr. Man probably telling Mr. Katie one of his famous “Wicked Jones” ghost stories, a protagonist of his own creation.
This might have been the portion of the evening where we made smores.

Preschool Nugget wasn’t much for sitting around the fire that evening. So I went in front of our house and took this picture of him on his tractor.

I call this picture ‘merica. I was trying to take advantage of the magic hour with the light and make a patriotic looking picture since my neighbor’s flag was out on display. I call it “merica because Preschool Nugget looks a little more rural than he actually is and the picture is kind of tying together flags and trucks which seems to invoke for me the Will Ferrell impression of George W. Bush where we calls America ‘merica.
I also took this picture around the same time. It is of my neighbor’s backyard. It also seems pastoral.
Here is a picture of our camper. We still have it up in the backyard. We have been finding that we all like to hang out in it. Maybe we will keep it up in our yard more this summer.

Later on in the weekend, Mr. Katie gave the boys summer haircuts.

Both boys seemed to like their new summer looks.
Preschool Nugget is surprisingly calm when he is getting his head buzzed.
The boys might be so compliant with being calm during haircutting because they usually get a pretty good lollipop after their haircut as a reward. When we decided to stop going to Sweet and Sassy’s to get haircuts and do haircuts at home, quality lollipops were Mr. Man’s major stipulation. He insists.

In conclusion, we really didn’t leave our town much during Memorial Day weekend but we had a restorative time.

How was your weekend? I will check my privilege because neither Mr. Katie nor I worked on Memorial Day weekend. I have worked in the past and I was grateful that I was off this year.

I hope you are doing well.

Katie

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Published by Katie Nicholson

7 Replies to “Our Memorial Day Weekend and End of the School Year”

  1. I think that most of us all had a restorative Memorial day holiday! As for marching bands and parades, the Nicholsons all participated in many of them. Your Mister Katie participated in many of them. The Nicholsons always held a Memorial day picnic every year. From 1957 to 1982 we had all the picnics for the three summer Holidays. Backard camping sounds great! Love to all. Oh and a little baby was born as well.

  3. What a great way to usher in the Summer- haircuts, camping, Merica! Hope we get to share a little sun time with you all..

  4. let’s get together soon. Loved the blog and the pictures.

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