Celebrating Labor Day

With Labor Day right around the corner, I wanted to look into some fun and exciting ways to celebrate with the kids and at the same time teaching them about honoring those that work hard. This holiday fits so well into our responsibility unit as well, yeah for timing! Without much further ado here are some ideas that I would love to incorporate:

* Interview older family members and ask what type of work their parents and grandparents did
* Create a "good work" sign for the hardest working person you know
*Bake homemade bread and reread The Little Red Hen
* Read some stories and discuss who was working hard, responsible, etc
* Talk about what types of careers that the kids would be interested in ( Austen has already stated he wants   to be a shopper man, aka: cashier, because it would be the easiest job to push food down the belt and hand  people receipts. oh boy!)
* Prepare a family meal together and work at preparing, setting the table, and clearing the table together
* Watch a Thomas the Train movie and discuss who was hardworking and who was not in the movie
* Build a train track and work hard together to accomplish this task
* Discuss what , " Many hands makes light works" means
* Finally, maybe I'll even buy my staple gun so I can work hard and finish a project that's been sitting in my   living room now for a month!

Happy Labor Day to all the hardworking men and women out there!

Bad Attitude warning

So I was making my way quite well through today and then now, mid afternoon, I have a pretty bad attitude. I just have to be honest...I am really starting to hate holidays in general. I try with everything in me to make them great, memorable, etc. but my husband always works all day on the holiday whether day or night, with no family around and nothing really special about the day it is getting old.

Of course, my kids make things special and we end up celebrating on a different day but I feel no real sense of sentimental attachemnt to rush and get cards in the mail or even care what day it is because we are never a whole family on that day anyways.

If you've never been in this position, please don't judge....you couldn't possibly understand in the first place. I would be totally fine if Ben was around...totally fine...but the fact that he is not and as hard as I might try all the expectations growing up are totally a bust by day end. It just feel like there is no point. What's a day?

Would I be such a horrible parent if I just stopped celebrating any and EVERY holiday until we could be all together, our little family of 6. I don't know. I am thinking of going up north during Christmas time just to get away from the sight of every one's driveways filled with family cars and no snow. Its just my traditional side will not let me "give up" ....I still go through all the preperations for the kids but the enjoyment of so much of it is really lacking.

I am looking forward to the day that a holiday stops landing on a Sat/Sunday and we can be together and celebrate and just enjoy the day. When we first moved out here, holidays were great..Ben did not work weekends/evenings so we enjoyed the day fully. Its just the being alone, totally no "greatness" about the day feeling.

If you've been in my situation and you have some nice advice, feel free to comment.....I'm not looking for pity, please don't patronize....this is more of a personal note for myself than anything.