As if you need an excuse to roll up your sleeves, dip your fingers in paint and smear it everywhere but on the canvas – yup, just give in to it, your house will not be clean until the kiddies leave for good….and then you will miss it – so enjoy it now – September 26 through October 2nd is National Keep Kids Creative Week.  Here are some ideas of what you can do that “qualifies” as creative:

Cook
take a walk and collect leaves
Strum, bang, blow on anything to make music
sing.  The louder the better!
Draw, Paint, Color
Blow up a balloon and see what you can make out of it, get it to stick to something, use it as a base for paper mache (basically just dipping strips of newspapers into water and flower).

And, if like me, your kids are growing up and their idea of creative is learning the newest Eminem song, then see what kind of App would make your life and theirs easier – and download it to your phone.

Whatever it is, if you share in it, it qualifies as creative.

It’s not too late to start (or pull the old plans that you are still losing money on and start over):  http://www.collegesavings.org/index.aspx

Enjoy the time
That you are nine
Do not grow up too fast
For once it’s gone
It seems too long
Since we remembered it last.

Every summer seems to develop a theme song. A song that when it comes on the radio will take you back in time and allow you to relive a select few special moments in your life and possibly a general feeling captured by that time.

Finally getting the kids back to school after the longest summer we have ever experienced was, honestly, a bit of a relief. Which is why I was caught a bit off guard driving home from drop off during the first week of school when a song came on that made me wistful for the just-days-gone-by. Images of changing faces, the slight hint of a mustache, the thinning out of the cheeks; the sounds of the high and low contrast of giggles, getting used to “mom” in deep low tone and reveling in the still long kid conversations; Paradise cove long beach walks; kids in Junior Guard uniforms; matching Buzz Lightyear T-shirts at Disneyland; holding on for dear life with squeals of joy on a jetski…. All of this was brought up in the first few notes.

This song will forever capture that moment in time when my boys were caught between being boys and being men. When their thoughts were short and their hair was long. When it was all about the simple things like when and where. “All summer long” by Kid Rock has forever captured one of the best summers we have ever had. Close your eyes and listen. Hit it!

http://www.spike.com/video/all-summer-long-kid/2983283

(Note:  I say, “Close your eyes and listen,” because if you watch the video, the innocence of the song is lost….)

“When you cease to make a contribution, you begin to die.”

-Eleanor Roosevelt

“Top what’s out there, or you’ll be ignored.”