Why I love my job...

So, it's been a while. Again. I had such high hopes of actually keeping this thing more current. Bah. Anyhow, June is gone, and I feel weird about it. On one hand I'm thinking - HOLY COW (not the gold one - he wasn't very holy, though, was he?) It's already JULY?!?! On the other hand, I can't believe it's ONLY July 1st. A lot of things happened for me in June. I went on vacation! Almost a real-honest-to-goodness vacation! I spent a week in Colorado visiting parents and extended parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles and friends of old - or rather friends of young, since I haven't seen most of these people since I was itty bitty. This trip was kind of a big deal, as Shaun and I really struck out "on our own" - sort of. We got up around the spine of dawn (even earlier than the crack of dawn), packed up our bags, hoofed to the bus stop, got off, hoofed it to the MAX and rode to the airport. Once we landed in Denver, we decided there had to be a better deal than our $200 shuttle to my parents' house. And after a few trips to the car rental places we hopped in our 2007 Dodge Caliber and putt putted our way to Pueblo (on a funny side side note, our rental car was initially supposed to be a Michael Scott Sebring convertable!).
Yipes - this is getting long! Basically the trip was nice... we made it back and the only tears shed were mine as we were leaving our dog at the vet for boarding while we were gone.
So I had a nice week-long paid vacation, got back, swapped classrooms at school, had our graduation, tore down the classroom we just moved, and then set up my very own elementary Summer Camp Classroom. It was crazy and busy and hectic and a LOT of work, but it was fun. By the next Monday I was ready to start my new summer position! The first two weeks of summer camp were AWESOME!!!
Also in June:
-visit from in-laws. Fun but trying
-almost throwing away of thousands of dollars!!!
-paid off the car!!!!! We managed to only make TWO payments - one monthly and one for the remainder of the balance! WHOO HOO
-paid off all credit cards
-put more toward the principles of student loans and mortgage!
-broke again - but RELIEVED
-first off-site field trip... FUN with Few exceptions
-babysitting
-more babysitting

It's just seemed like a FULL month... but a happy month.

So... on to the ORIGINAL purpose of this post....
I am running a summer camp for 5-10 year olds. It is awesome. I truly love this age group, and being able to finally run it MY way, only MY way... and also get paid for all the work I'm actually doing. Perfection. That's cool. OF course there are "those" kids. Those who are just a bit more frivilous with your nerves. You know who I'm talking about. We've all seen them. Even the other children are aware - and know how to deal with it for the most part. And of course, it's the kid that's in attendence every day, all day... Then you meet the parents and are like "OH" and bob your head in understanding. Well, we've got that kid. And have done remarkably well so far this summer. Yesterday he was sitting at the art table drawing one of his Chinese Egyptian structures, singing that same line from the one church hymn that's always stuck in his head. At the other end of the table, I was sitting with his antithesis. One of the sweetest, gentlest, most personable, mellow kids I know. And this kid looks at me and says
"He should be on that one, you know, um, American Idol. Because then he would be... somewhere else. And not, you know... here."
That was some quick cheek-biting-hold-it-in-get-outta-there-QUICK-before-you-laugh-in-their-face...
And man - are these kids funny! They bring so much laughter and joy to my day... every day.
I really am going to need to start looking for another job after summer, but this age group is my proverbial cup of tea.
Yikes.
Well, this quick anectodal post has gone on loooooooooong enough.

ciao