Ah summer

It is summer time and things are good. I am finally on vacation, and we are not doing much. It's actually kind of nice. Yesterday we went to my sister's cottage for the first time. It was a lot of fun, and Jackson loved going tubing on the boat a few times. He was VERY upset when it was time to leave. It took a lot of convincing to get him in the car and he refused to hug anyone. He was quite hungry as he refused to eat while we were there, it might have made him miss something after all! That didn't help how he behaved. He was much better after we got home. I imagine we won't be going back until next year at least. It would be nice to stay a little longer than 4 hours too. We got very lucky with the weather, it rained before we left, and as we were driving home.

Today was another good day. We went to a community pool and swam for about an hour. It was quite nice and he had a lot of fun. We'll go again next week, perhaps try a different pool, there are a few around. Jackson had a lot of fun, he really enjoyed it. I had fun watching him have fun. And we stopped for a treat on the way home, he had a frozen lemonade and a doughnut, I had an iced coffee.  We then went to dinner, and he ate a HUGE meal, adult sized. My parents gave him a gift card for dinner and we used it pretty much all up lol. He does have some leftovers, hopefully he'll eat them. He's not keen on leftovers most of the time.

Tomorrow he is going to daycare. It is basketball day according to the calendar and he is quite excited to go. I am happy he's going at least one day a week over the 5 weeks we are off, he needs to keep up with it, and to go have fun with his friends. He wants to go on all the days they go to special parks. We will find a week or at least a few days to go visit my parents, probably mid-month.

He goes back to school on September 8th, and I go back to work on the 9th, so I'll be able to take him for his first day of grade 1. I am sure it will be exciting and he'll be a bit scared. At least he will have lots of friends.

Apparently he's been doing really well in daycare. He had one "friend" who he loves to play with but they are just not good for each other. They have been separated and so Jackson has had a chance to show his own personality and explore new things to do. He loves to do sports and has been playing with the older kids, up to grade 6. He also likes to play card games and apparently will play with anyone, he gets along with all the other kids and will join in with everyone. He has his moments of course, he is only 5 and the youngest kid in the "schoolager" program. But he is doing well, after a rough start. I'm happy. It's a nice transition to real school. Kindergarten is about fun and playing, Grade 1 is about sitting and learning. Daycare for grade 1 is about group activities. You don't get to go do what you want when everyone else is playing a game.

I am pretty happy to be on a long vacation. I don't get paid for my time off but they average the unpaid days over a year so it's just a small pay cut and doesn't affect things like my pension or benefits. I hope to do it every summer, and save my paid vacation days for other times like Christmas and winter. We won't be able to take a trip this winter sadly, I have some debt to get paid off and am (finally) deciding to put some effort into it. Even with the pay cut. Once that is done we'll be able to travel more I think. If my union would finally sign a new contract I'd get enough in raises, back pay and pay out that I'd be able to pay off my debts and probably have a down payment for a house... it would at least make up for the 5 unpaid weeks this year. Fingers crossed it'll happen this year.

On a boat for the first time