Out of the Box Summer

A couple weeks ago, I finished my first year of my PhD with straight A's. I went straight from finishing my college semester to focusing on finishing my school year as a teacher, which meant grading 86 research papers and teaching one more book in the remaining three weeks of May. Happy to say I finished the last of those papers today and besides another day and half of classes, I am free!

Well, free of my full time job for a few months, but not free from the ebb and flow of life. Next week will lead me straight into planning the rest of my daughter's graduation party: ordering food, making decorations, and putting together picture collages. She's a full time college student next fall and our relationship will begin to change. I don't know how to navigate it all quite yet, but I'm desperate to find a decent balance of parent she still needs and the friend I will eventually fully become.

The party at the end of June will give way to a few days of taking care of our friends' two boys while they are away on a trip. Bringing my two younger kiddos as back up, of course. Triple teaming them ensures we all come out alive and happy! Haha! I am looking forward to getting to know the boys better. The past year has definitely taken a toll on my connections to my close friends' families and I feel I've missed some milestones.

A week later, my husband and I are off to Israel for ten days. This is a trip of a lifetime for more than one reason. First of all, it's a pilgrimage for us - to walk where Jesus walked. I am expecting big things - to come back refreshed, fulfilled, and ready with a new word for my path. Second, my husband and I have never been on a trip together, not even a honeymoon. Although we'll be traveling with a mix of friends and new acquaintances, our kids won't be there and the evenings will be ours to do as we please. I get nervous when my kids take simple trips away, so this will be a challenge even as it is a dream come true. Third, besides Canada, we've never been out of the country. Besides a one hour flight to Chicago, we've never spent any significant amount of time on a plane. This is the Middle East! The flight is nonstop eleven hours one way! This trip tests everything I've said I would never do, because leaving the comfort and familiarity of home challenges me on every level - physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. Yet, even in my most nervous moments, I feel the desperate tug to go. 

Two weeks after returning from Israel, my children and I are meeting friends just outside of Myrtle Beach, SC where we all rented a beach house for the first week of August. My husband just started a new job and they so graciously gave him unpaid time for the Israel trip (which he shouldn't have received), so he won't be going on the beach trip with us. I travelled once before without him, chaperoning our church's youth group to Ocean City, MD. But this feels crazy. The trip was meant to be one more family trip, as our oldest daughter's schedule will change more drastically as a full time college student next year. So in that vein, it makes sense to be upset my husband won't be there. But, this is how in a box I have kept my life: I can't fathom that I am driving my kids all the way down there myself...my husband always does the driving. I'm going to have family vacation photos without him in them? I can't fathom that I am spending an actual vacation without my husband...he's my comfort in my out of the box situations.

The week we get back from the beach, I go back to in-service days for teaching, my students come the following week, and my next PhD semester follows the week after that. And the crazy begins again...not that it's stopping over summer to begin with.

I typically don't like this much busyness...I likes gaps of break time between events. But this year is different. These events are all amazing and special in some way. They are all extremely personal to me for different reasons, but also for the same reason - I have to step out of my box and trust God. It's almost like someone planned it out for me - a summer of out of the box living. All of these events usher in endings that also serve as beginnings. One thing is sure - I won't make it to the end of the summer the same person I began it as.

Readcation Trial

Gatsby, my reading partner, wasn't always a huge help.

Sunday after Christmas came and all I could see coming to me throughout the vast holiday break was a week of cleaning my house. Boo! My house does need a week's worth of cleaning out, but there's no way I could spend my whole week off doing so without feeling like crazy person just in time to go back to work. I needed some fun things to do. Luckily a few get togethers came together and I also planned my very own Readcation.

The idea of a Readcation - a vacation spent reading - has been an adulthood dream of sorts, but Book Riot gave it a name and set up. Once I read the Readcation article in October, I knew I'd make it happen at least on a small scale. (My actual dream is to take a year sabbatical just to read through my TBR list, keeping a journal as I read.)

I picked Monday, December 28th as my Readcation day because there wasn't anything going on until much later in the evening and I knew I wouldn't be interrupted. Of course, I slept in first, a must on a day off when I'd usually be up by six. Upon waking, I settled in to read right in my bed (my kids are older, so without worry they'd be up any time soon). This is how every day should start. First up was A Prayer for Owen Meany because I assigned the first five chapters to my AP students over break and only had thirty pages left of those 255. I've been enjoying the reread, picking up the nuances I didn't notice the first time, because it's been so long since I read it.

I soon moved onto The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern. I've been meaning to read it, but it wasn't on the top of the TBR either. However, a student is reading it for his independent novel project and, knowing I wanted to read it, he told me before break that his project was going to ruin it for me, so I'd better read it. I was so happy he warned me, that I took my classroom copy home with me and read to page 71 before I felt sleepy and decided to take a nap.

Monday evening was spent with family and friends, but I also read more Tuesday and Wednesday mornings, finishing up close to half of The Night Circus. I liked the taste of Readcation and plan on implementing it more strictly in the future.

Has anyone taken a vacation for the purpose of reading before? If so, you're my hero and I want to hear about it.