I think I may love end of school more than my kids.  It is a time of sincere celebration so I was excited to be the one driving the carpool the last week. 

All year long we did Word of the Day.   I had a bag full of SAT vocab and they had to pick one each morning and use it in a sentence to get an after school treat on the way home.  Surprisingly, they loved it.  Really, I was shocked by how much fun they had.  We’re really just a carpool of nerds.  So the last week I told them I would treat them to Baskin Robins – anything goes – if they could remember 20 of the words.

As luck would have it, none of the other carpool kids had ever been to Baskin Robins.  EVER!  How is that possible?!?  We practically live there.  You should have seen them trying to take in all 31 flavors and all the possibilities.  That was a happy ride home!

Danielle and Savannah had other plans for their last day of school – cool shoes.  They worked on these masterpieces for days.  FYI they glow in the dark – not that they needed more glowing power.

Here they are with our carpool breakfast…on the VERY LAST DAY!!!

And one last look at our carpool…

That was Friday and they were all smiles on the way home.  Saturday morning and Danielle is laying around depressed.  “I miss school,”  she says less than 24 hours into my summer bliss – a bliss that is defined by no homework, no projects, no reports and no tests.  A day later she is enrolled in three online classes.  THREE!  That same day she does about 4 hours worth of homework.  I’m already missing my bliss.

I am confident that Michael has my back.  There is no way he is going to have any kind of adverse reaction to having the summer off!

Ty gave Stephanie, and apparently me, airline miles for graduating college.  It was probably the most perfect gift she has ever received!  It was incredibly hard to narrow the choices of destinations down to one but in the end she was successful and the two of us flew to Budapest, Hungary – or Hungaria as I kept calling it.

The “Picture Album” link has quite a few pictures & details from our trip so you can go there get the real travel story.  I will say that Budapest is a very beautiful city.  I didn’t expect that and we were so impressed by how many wonderful  sites they have that are very well maintained. 

This picture sums up a lot of our trip – daily ice cream and all day walking.  We hiked up so many hills!  But as you can see, the view was always rewarding and so was the weight loss we enjoyed as a result.

I highly recommend that all my kids graduate from college!  We had a great time together and made so many fun memories that we will be able to look back on for years to come.