1st day 2nd days

the night before school started i spent about 5 1/2 hours not cleaning my kitchen. i stood by the sink and slowly pushed things around while in a trance because i was so dang tired from this summer! fun and pools and activities are great and all but i think next summer we are just going to find a business that will freeze the kids for 2 months in suspended animation. then i will go to the pool and lay on a chair like a blob and not worry about anyone drowning. 

the one thing that did get accomplished the night before was backpack packing. i told reagan to put his backpack in a safe place where he could easily find it. mission accomplished.

1st day!

whenever i start something new, i always draw up a new schedule of what i would ideally like to have happen each day. i call it the "schedule of delusions of grandeur" because it never happens.  it includes things like:

• get up really early to go running
• prepare healthy breakfast meals for everyone
• take positive and life-affirming first day of school pictures
• promptly start homework and job charts after school
• eat a healthy and filling dinner prepared by me
• read 30 minutes aloud to the kids before bedtime

 however, this first day of school was a FIRST. we did it! i didn't oversleep, i got up and went running, which was actually not my best decision. it was during a lightning storm and i spent the majority of the running praying, "please please protect me from this stupid decision." i did have a really great pace trying to outrun the lightning. the kids weren't running around like crazies when i got back and we DID leave to school on time. (making it to school on time due to carline traffic and walking 3 blocks with both kid's backpacks on my back is another story.)

life-affirming first day of school photos!!! an unnamed child with long brown hair dropped and broke my camera a few months ago so unfortunately every crisp, clear, riveting* picture is from my iphone.) *sarcasm font has yet to be invented

we easily found classrooms, had minimal tears(only me, because i know no one will love these dum dums like me) and i drove off into the sunrise as the storms finally cleared. 

that darn blythe did wreak absolute havoc in every room of the house while the bigs were at school.

the triumphal return!

 necessary 1st grader posing:

i'm concerned because scarlett really wanted to pose like a rockstar. i really wanted her to pose like a doctor or a dentist or an actuary or a librarian or any job where they keep their clothes on.

after snacks and chit chat, we accomplished our job and homework chart! it was the twilight zone! i wrote out the list of tasks and they accomplished them with minimal fuss.

and then they played and ate dinner and we read for 30 minutes(and even affected voices for different characters!) and went to bed. i was expecting us all to wake up dead the next morning because of a gas leak or something because of how well everything went the day before. 

day 2

after such a glorious start, i needed some humbling. things were more slapdashed together but we still got basic necessities taken care of. at 1:26pm i got a phone call from the school nurse that poor reagan and just revealed the contents of his previously eaten lunch all over his desk and that i needed to get him ASAP. so, going from bad to terrible i had to wake the baby up from her nap(HORROR!) and retreive my little regurgitator. i arrived at the school and parked my broom(just a little witch humor for you) and found poor reagan huddled up in the nurses office on a chair. not even on a cot! i asked to have scarlett called to the office so we could just make a one big mass evacuation of the simpson family. reagan starts to get sick again so i hustle him out of the school so that he can barf on the bushes and not the floor. we've had a relatively mild summer, but this day it was 90+ degrees outside and a gabillion percent humidty and we are sweating like squirrels on a griddle. we wait 20 minutes in the heat(i know! i come from pioneer ancestory! let's talk about our trials!) for scarlett to be summoned. i'm not one to tell other people how to do their job, but i was about to run down to her classroom myself and just pull her out by her rockstar pigtails. i've got an 8 year old covered in hot, stinky barf and a 16 month old with a school bus fascination death wish dancing in the street as the buses pull up. let's expedite this process!

after we finally got home, reagan showered and was fine. he's got a sensitive stomach and can't handle his nerves well all the time. we did no chores, i made up no homework, we choked down something that was once frozen for convenience and i did read 30 minutes to the kids but the character voices were considerably less authentic. 

scarlett did take a few more rockstar pictures for posterity so we can claim we knew her before she was famous(or got her Phd).