Ultimate Blog Challenge - To Do List Graduation Activities

Today's assignment is to share a valuable lesson I learned that helped me overcome a challenge I was facing.

Boy, do I have challenges to talk about!

It's called mental load. So much of it at the end of not just a regular school year, but the end of junior high. 

I'm a Mom to an only child. Can't be that hard, right? 

He's a 15 year old boy who has other things on his mind than sharing his upcoming activities and associated planning and getting sh** done effort. 

I am married to a husband who works six days a week and does not participate in the mundane day-to-day stuff.

There's always food in the fridge, and laundry is always done.

Plus I have a day job, where I typically spend three days a week. 

So what were my challenges in the last two weeks?

Get a suit. In Switzerland we don't do talar and tassel, kids are just supposed to dress up, and I have been told this by Colin. No recommended attire from school. A family was happy to lend us suits worn once by their sons, unfortunately the pants didn't fit. Colin did not have time to go shopping with me. Of course he also wasn't enthusiastic about it. I asked him to measure his waist and leg length. By text. I was at work, he was home. 

Took some explanation, but he did come up with a realistic result, 90/80. Centimeters, that is. Converted into inches, it is 31.5/35.5. The first pair I purchased, based on these measurements, was too large. Back I went to the store to get the smaller size. Last night I forced him to come to the shoe store with me. This went surprisingly well. Check.

Hair appointment. He said he needed a haircut himself. That's a good start. Do you want me to make an appointment, in which case you need to give me your availability, or are you gonna take care of it yourself? He wanted to be the independent and responsible young adult, but ended up pulling the teenager card. We called the salon together yesterday, and surprisingly they had two time slots for today. My guy? "8:30am or 4:30pm? That's not very convenient for me". Me, grabbing the phone we'll take 4:30pm, thank you sooo much for squeezing us in! Check.

Don't forget that I needed a hair appointment for myself as well. 

Bike Tour / Sleepover with his classmates: Pay in cash in advance, check packing list, prepare snacks. The packing wss a case of pulling teeth, but finally he did it. They had a good time. He got about three hours of sleep and was in bad shape the day after, even though he took a long afternoon nap. Check.

Presentation Final Paper: Thursday, June 29, Check. Barely though. I blogged about it here. In the meantime they got their evaluation. They passed.  

Official Graduation "Party": Thursday, July 6: confirm number of dinner participants, decide on  dishes beforehand. Three families, eleven people. Am still working on it. Why is it always me who takes care of these things? Update: The restaurant owner - who speaks Italian - asked me to order our dishes in advance since we're not the only large party. Contacted everybody. Fortunately the responded promptly. Food is ordered. Check.

Kids' private Graduation Party: they are doing a BBQ, tomorrow night, and Colin is going to take care of everything he needs by himself. Check - well, a cautious check. Something tells me he's gonna wanna bring cookies or cake. I will be at work the whole day. There will be no baking. Repeat after me: no baking! 

Farewell gift teacher(s): In elementary school I took it upon me to care of coming up with creative ways to honor and thank the teachers, as well as to make it fun for the kids. Of course I also used to collect the money from 20+ parents. A long and exhausting process. I talked to Colin about it back in April. He said not to worry about it, they were going to take care of it themselves. Alright, that's nice. All I can say is tonight, the official graduation ceremony is taking place, and the one card he purchased is still lying on the living room table. in its original packaging. However, he told me they ordered socks for their main teacher. Socks??? Yeah, they had a picture of every student printed on them. I'd love to see that. Anyway, Check. I guess.

Preparation for the upcoming hockey season: the training schedule for August has already been uploaded. Too bad I don't have any information on Colin's new school yet. Not the location (there are two different campus - campus is plural for campus??), not the schedule, not a contact person to ask for early release on the day their personal team jerseys are being issued. Ugh. Don't get me started on the fact that he keeps growing and probably needs new gear. But we'll cross that bridge during summer break.

Tonight I will enjoy his Graduation. I can't even. I must have blinked. Didn't he only just start first grade?