Monday, April 5, 2010

Rock and a hard place

So get this - DW needs to tell her jobs now what hours she wants over the summer. Summers are usually hard because teaching hours are limited, but like I said before, we depend on her income to help make ends meet, so we want her to work as many hours as she can get.

Thing is, the kids get out of school in late May and go back in mid-August. So what are we supposed to do with them during the summer while DW's out working? DK1 is going to sleepaway camp in for three weeks in July, and the other two have two weeks of Jewish Federation day camp and DK2 has an additional 2 weeks of specialty camps, and let's say I'll take a week off sometime during that time, so... that leaves about, oh, 9 weeks to fill for each of them.

Of course, the Y has a camp, which is about $100 per kid per week. If DW works as much as she could realistically work - just for kicks, let's say 40 hours - she'd be pulling in enough to pay for the camps and have a little left over for regular budget items. If she doesn't work full time - a more realistic possibility, given past experience - then she would barely, or possibly not even, be paying for the camps, with none left over for that all important ends-meeting. Of course, if she doesn't work, we don't have the camp expense, but ends don't meet either. Quandary, no?

So... what would you do?

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