Ready? Set? Wing It!

So today was the first day of school.  This fact was glaringly obvious as I sleepily browsed through the morning Facebook statuses shortly after my alarm went off.  This morning I gave myself an attainable goal; be up, showered, make-uped, dressed, and fed by 9:00AM.  I'm not an early riser.  I enjoy late nights and late mornings...however, I'm turning over a new leaf.  I'm gonna try my hand at "home school super-mom!"  I know, I know...9:00AM is hardly "super," but it's super for me!!  I'm thinking that next week I'll try 8:30...we'll see.

I wasn't fully prepared for this morning...by my standards at least.  I had spent the greater part of last week ordering a few things online, cleaning up a few things, organizing books, and logging onto Connections Academy after 2.5 months of hiatus.  I was very fortunate to make early contact with the kids' teacher and felt fairly confident about the upcoming school-year after a brief conversation with her.  The kids have the same teacher this year...and it is awesome!  Still, after all of that, my online purchases have only arrived in part and some of my school preparations have been put on hold.  I'm a little bummed, but I have given myself a little grace considering the busy-ness of my summer.  August is often a more flexible month in terms of "free time," but the somewhat sudden passing of my father-in-law swallowed up whatever free time was left.  So, I crammed all of my school planning into the 5 days I had between two camping trips.  Five days sounds like a lot. Ha ha ha.

We left for a 4-day camping trip in Naselle, WA on Friday morning, and then I woke with a screaming sore throat on Saturday. Yay! I love spending time with my niece Evelyn, and spent the day watching her on the Wednesday before while doing all of my camping/school shopping in Longview.  She had a little cough at the time that had turned into a full-blown cold by Friday.  Anyway, I hastily pulled the reigns on my sore throat with my tried and true homeopathic remedy and have kept the symptoms down from a scream to a subtle nuisance.  Still, sleep has been a bit more difficult and I'm currently on day 4 of this "nuisance" that seems to stubbornly want to run its course. Blah. 

I'm pretty tired.  And my body is feeling it after a full day of home school.  But, I can't complain too much.  The kids woke before their alarms went off (alarm clocks for the kids was one of the online purchases) and were ready to go by 9:00.  I was surprised and refreshed by their eagerness to start the day.  And despite the rise of expectations from 2nd to 3rd grade, Synnove attacked her lessons with more patience and diligence than I had originally hoped.  My goal was to finish the day by 1:00, but there were a few hiccups...one being that my printer stopped working.  We didn't finish until almost 3:00, BUT we ended the day with big high fives and a new printer! Woot!!

I'm so happy right now.  Yeah, my nose is slightly stuffed and I have a printer to install, but I am overjoyed with the prospect of a highly successful 2013-2014 school year!