Thinking About Our Summer Routine

It’s Eurovision week and Mother’s Day weekend, plus we’re heading towards the end of school. There’s a lot going on! So this blog post may just be a conglomeration of thoughts, but I’ll end with some things I want to do build into our summer routine (in between camps, camps and more camps).

1. Eurovision

I’ve got an unfinished Eurovision blog post somewhere from a couple years ago. At this point, it will remain unfinished. So I’ll just say that over the past three years, Eurovision has become my favorite way to learn about new/new-to-me artists. For at least four months of the year, from the time the first national qualifiers start through the Eurovision grand final, I’m discovering new music. And a lot of lasting favorites!

Plus, people have very strong opinions. Especially once the semi-finals begin…I love reading the Instagram comments to see who everyone thinks was “robbed” or “overrated.” Who is “never watching Eurovision again, it’s so unfair.” So much drama!

Here’s a playlist of all of this year’s official music videos: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmWYEDTNOGULUJYEhh-EUa32rEcHuNXO7&si=VeYnVwyvzAGoH4n3

My favorites this year are Croatia, Lithuania, Netherlands and Finland. If you give them a listen, let me know which songs stand out to you!

2. Mother’s Day

I saw a ScaryMommy post on Instagram that said,

“Mother’s Day as a single, divorced mom is tough. There’s not a designated person to celebrate you, no one to help your kids make you cards or breakfast in bed – or even remind them about the holiday.

But it’s gotten better. I’m learning to celebrate it myself, with my kids. We go on a spring hike to spot wild flowers, we get my favorite Chinese takeout. We work in the yard and toast marshmallows over the fire pit.

And you know what? In a lot of ways it’s better, because there’s no disappointment, there’s zero let down, there’s no ‘I wish.’ It’s just me and my kids, having fun.”

This is my first Mother’s Day as an officially single mom. Last year, I bought myself my own gift anyway, which spectacularly backfired because it was Pokémon cards, and I pulled one of the best cards we’ve ever gotten. Joss didn’t love that. Thought it would be something fun to do together, but not so much. This year, we’re going to the Renaissance Festival with a friend.

Anyway, so I don’t have a list of “things I want for Mother’s Day” or gift ideas or anything. I don’t mind taking charge of my own celebration and just looking forward to a fun day. It’s pirate weekend, so I turned to Kristi Roe Owen’s blog post about what to wear to the Renaissance Festival for inspiration 🙂

3. Summer Plans

Along the lines of being newly single, this past year has been pretty stressful. I feel like I’ve disconnected a lot, and want to hopefully start re-connecting this summer. With Joss in particular. While he’s enrolled in several camps (maybe too many?), I want to think about our afternoons, evenings and weekends, too. Here are some things that I think would be fun to build into our summer routine:

1. Get back into Pokémon card tournaments. We were doing this every weekend, but it’s now been a couple months! Oops. But this is a low-cost, screen-free activity that’s a definite option.
2. DnD at the library. Joss’s best friend has been playing DnD at the library all year, but Joss had a scheduling conflict. Now that it’s nearly summer, we can do this! [Edit: Well, we found out Joss is too young for this group. So instead, I’m hoping to host some one shot DnD nights at home!]
3. Sunday game nights. I think it would be really fun to have an open-invitation for friends to come over Sunday nights and play card/board games.
4. Homemade sushi nights. Joss is always wanting to make homemade sushi. But it always sounds like kind of a hassle to me – when it really isn’t that bad. I just need to figure out how to get things not so dry. Maybe we can turn this into sush-and-a-movie nights.
5. Invite friends over. Basically, I just want to do better at remembering to invite his friends over. Or meet at a park, etc. That way, even if they’re still playing Nintendo or something, at least it’s a social activity!
6. Swim at the YWCA. For awhile, we were doing spin class and swimming on Sundays at the Y. I did the spin class, and Joss’s reward was getting to do family swim with me afterwards. Since we need to get back into swimming before camps start, I’d like to…maybe…try this again. Although it’s also nice to keep Sundays open, so a different day may be better. Or maybe we can just try to swim more regularly at the community pools. Hmmm.
7. Bike riding. Joss has been enjoying riding his bike, so hopefully there will be some days where it isn’t too hot to take it for a spin! Sadly, I don’t currently have a working bike, so need to work on that so I can keep up! Otherwise, it will just be more laps around the playground.
8. Duolingo? I re-downloaded the Duolingo app, thinking that maybe that’s something we could do together this summer. We’ll see. I’ve started Duolingo twice, and lasted all of a couple days. Any tips?

Anyway, if you read this, thank you for following along with my brainstorming. What are some things you’d like to build into your summer routine? We may be so tired in between camp, work, etc., that some of these things never materialize. But we will see!