An Embarassment of Boredome

Over the last couple of weeks, DH and I have had to sit through a lot...and I mean A LOT.. of end of year presentations. Every activity the kids do (and 2 of them do 2, and 1 does one, and they all go to school...and wait, did I just create a verbal math equation?) has an end of year gig.

So I've sat through:

1 hour of Scouts
1 hour of Girl Guides
3.5 hours of dancing
3.5 hours of gymnastics
45 minutes of basketball
3 hours of school awards night

That, my friends, is a heck of a lot of time. Like an entire day's worth of ceremonies and awards and some awful orchestral pieces and spending my time watching all the parents around me texting and playing on their iPhones. (Although to be fair I was one of those parents. A girl's gotta do, right?) I am especially proud to brag that at most of those events, one if not more of my kids got honours given to them.

I'm excited and proud of them, but the real parent (TM) in me is really sitting there thinking, "I've got to put up with HOURS of this just for a piece of paper? Really?!" In the case of ballet, it was all those hours (and over 40 pieces of dance, OMG how many cartwheels can a person endure?) only to get a certificate with DD2's name spelled incorrectly. Honestly. And while I get that the idea is to showcase all the hard work the kids put in over the course of a year...I'd be much happier going to two shorter events twice a year than this one bloody long one which makes me want to slowly push a stick into my eye while I'm sitting there...just because focussing on the pain would be far more interesting.

I realise that my pain is exacerbated by having to do this x three kids and x so many activities..it's a 'side effect' of the triplet phenomenon I never planned for. I've now decided that DH and I are going to get our own certificates to honour our patience, commitment, and ability to withstand hours upon hours of physical and auditory pain.