Labor Day - Just Another Holiday?

Every year on the first Monday of September, the nation celebrates Labor Day--a special day set aside to honor the workers of America--and is touted as the unofficial end of summer. In the "olden days", Labor Day was celebrated publicly with parades, speeches, picnics and other festivities. In small communities, shops were closed so that the owners could enjoy the festivities. Factories shut down to allow their workers time off.

In today's society, Labor Day is mostly observed by families gathering together for the last outdoor celebration of summer before the weather turns cold. Most (but not all) American workers get a day off and enjoy a 3-day weekend. People head to the mountains, lakes, rivers, streams, oceans, desert, campgrounds, boating marinas, shopping malls--just about everywhere to enjoy the last "hurrah".

So, how am I going to celebrate Labor Day Weekend?  I started by taking a vacation day on Friday in order to enjoy a 4-day weekend. And the rest of my itinerary goes like this:

• Sleep in late, which means sleeping in until any time after 5:00 a.m.  
• Do odd jobs around the house, like cleaning out under the kitchen sink--that huge cavity that stuff gets shoved into and is never seen again nor organized (bought cut-to-fit vinyl material to put on the bottom of the shelf)
• Go shopping
• Work on my children's story for church the following week
• Go shopping
• Help put up pegboard in the garage to re-organize the tools over the new location of the tool bench
• Go shopping
• Help put up storage racks and reorganize the garage storage configuration
• Go shopping
• Move stuff from the guest room closet out to the garage now that there is more storage room
• Go shopping
• Donate clothes and other items that haven't been used in the last two years
• Go shopping

Do you see a common theme in this itinerary? Of course, shopping does have its perks.  Believe it or not, this little box is filled with nearly one pound of chocolate (.98 pounds to be exact). This was our last purchase before heading home from the mall yesterday. We had a cooler in the car filled with ice packs to keep the chocolate from melting on the hour-long drive home. 

Did I mention that our Christmas shopping is almost done?