End of Season - What's a Mom to do?

St. Paddy's day brings lots of thing - green beer, all things Irish and probably for many - a good hangover on the 18th. Today also brings the announcement we have all been expecting - the TORONTO MAPLE LEAFS have been officially eliminated from the 2015 playoffs. As a lifelong fan - back when I was a child, you either rooted for the Leafs or the Habs. Who ever your dad rooted for, was usually who you rooted for. With only a couple of channels available you didn't have much choice on what games you watched.
 Today with specialty channels, dedicated hockey channels as well as the CBC there are so many more game options for you to watch. My favourite is still watching my kids at the local rink or even watching them play shinny on our backyard pond. As the weather warms up, the pond rink is now under a foot of melted snow. My son's team has finished their season - the coach will be having some practices and maybe entering them into a tournament to keep them in shape for tryouts in April. My daughter's team still has 2 more weekends of hockey - Championship games and then they will be having tryouts for next year.

So what to do now? For the last week we have had our evenings free. It has been wonderful. I have been able to do my homework and not have stay up until past midnight to get it done. During hockey season I basically got home from school, picked up a kid, headed to the arena, got home between 9 and 10 and then I could start my homework. Being able to start homework at 7pm has been great although I still find myself staying up, thinking there is something I am forgetting to do because I was done so early.

By mid April I will done school - hopefully with a job to go to. The next phase of my life will begin and I am looking forward to it. I am looking forward to having my evenings and weekends free of homework. First thing on my agenda is to do a massive clean up. All the hockey equipment will go in the washer for a good   "de-stink" and hung up outside in the fresh spring air to dry. It will then be packed up - waiting for next season and the back door area will also be de-cluttered of all hockey stuff and become presentable for people to actually come in and out the back door. Room by room we will tackle the house as a family. Between hockey and school, the house has been neglected so we need to get it back in shape. Hopefully we will have more time to have friends over, so I'd like the house to be presentable.

Next, I plan to visit my local bookstore and get a whole pile of books and read for the fun of it again. At New Years with my girlfriends who all like to knit, I started an afghan so I want to get back to it and finish that off. I need to paint the outside of my house, stain the deck, paint the bathroom ceiling and finish writing my husbands honey-do list. Gee what will I ever do without hockey???