I am sad.

Today we said goodbye to our VW bus, which we've had almost as long as we've been married. To be fair, it's spent the past 15+ years sitting in our backyard, being used as a plaything by the kids, but we all loved it, and it's a sad day. It sold rather more abruptly than i had expected, so Katrina came home from school, noticed that it was gone, and promptly burst into tears because she hadn't gotten to say goodbye or take pictures with it before it was gone.

The rest of the day (and also all day Saturday) was filled with weeding and raking and trimming trees and bushes and clearing out garbage from the backyard. On Saturday the kids and i weeded the garden, which ... i'm really hoping that at least most of what we pulled out were weeds. I am SO not a gardener. And we pulled out all of the weeds on the side of the house, which was a formidable amount. We borrowed a trailer from my dad and filled it with (Juanito's) trash - old tires and random pieces of wood and ... i don't even know what all. And then he brought that to the dump and we filled it again, this time with yard waste. And once that gets emptied tomorrow, then Juanito will fill it AGAIN, this time with metal to bring to the scrap yard. And then...we shall see. The backyard is not as embarrassing as it used to be, but it still needs some work.

Houston has exams this week. (I am trying to mostly let him do it on his own this time, but i'm not succeeding completely, because i think that left to his own devices, he would just...not study. Kill me now.)

Meanwhile, Katrina and Zane are in their last week of school, which seems to mean that they go to school and ... do nothing. For the past weeks, there have been So! Many! Events! Field Day and Track Day and Happy Fun Day for the grade school. Katrina got to go to the movie theater to see the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie because she did well on the standardized tests. Zane had beach day today. Katrina has beach day on Wednesday. Zane went to Michigan's Adventure last Wednesday. And.... Dude. I know there's always end of year excitement, but this is just insane.

REGARDLESS! Last week of school!!!! And there was much rejoicing!!!