Sleeping with Bread: Summer Bests and Summer Worsts

I'm getting a little lazy and copying my host post from the Sleeping with Bread blog and publishing it here. I hope to get back to more regular blogging soon.

This is it. The last week of summer vacation for my family. My tweenage daughter starts 4th grade next Monday and my teenage son starts his senior year in high school the following Thursday. Looking back over the summer, there have been a few "worst things" and a few "best things."

Worst Things:

I never got any real work done on my master's project. I had hoped to finish it... then I hoped to get a big chunk of it written... then I hoped to get the reading for it finished...

Let me just insert a huge sigh here.

I also was working on getting into shape and losing some weight. After a great start, my knees went out on me and that has stalled my progress.

How about another sigh?

Finally, the BIG one that you all know about. My mother's sudden death. I'll not be too flip with this one. It's complicated and sad and one of those life changing events that you cannot avoid. It happens and when it does, you have choices on how to deal with it--but it becomes a central part of your life for awhile.

Still, that's not all there is to this loaf of summer bread...

Best Things:

I am in a very good position to truly begin working on my project. I have the actual curriculum completed. I've got all my reading together to go over. I have a good friend working with me to help me with accountability.

I've not really gained much ground in my quest for physical fitness but I haven't really lost any ground either. In spite of a few weeks of careening off the diet track when my mom died, I am pretty much back on the tracks. It isn't perfect but I am not letting all that happened interfere completely with my efforts to get healthier.

Although the trip back to Oklahoma was not expected, it did give my kids a vacation. They got to play with cousins, hang out in a place where there was more to hold their attention than television and video games. In spite of the sad circumstances, I believe they experienced some rest and relaxation and relationship building.

I can't say I am looking forward to the fall. It brings some demands for me... that I act with discipline and commitment. I will be getting knee deep in probate matters for my mom's estate. The kids will have very different schedules and my husband will be, as always, a man on the road. I know, though, that with all its demands, life will also bring me comforts and joys. And those? Those I look forward to.