One week down!

The first week of school came and went. It actually went very fast. It was only five “work” days ago that I sent Caleb off to first grade and Rebekah to kindergarten. Within those five days they have made new friends, learned the lunch routine and have taken many pre-tests to determine how much they already know and how much need to learn.


Rebekah has been reviewing shapes, letters and numbers. She might actually be bored if she didn’t love to color and socialize so much. Caleb has a writing/reading assessment that he thoroughly hates because he has to use fine motor skills to write. But alternatively, he has math assessments that actually say (I kid you not) “algebra computation” that he really loves. He told me that “it‘s not really algebra, Mommy. It‘s just patt-er-erns.” And he loves patt-er-erns!

Sending them away for a large part of my day has been an adjustment. As much as I get bogged down with disciplining and breaking up fights, I really do love my children. I miss curling up on the couch and running out of lap space. I miss getting kisses from all directions even if I do know that it is them just sucking up to get something.

However, while they have been gone I have really gotten to spend some much needed quality time with Elizabeth and Zech. We have settled into a great routine that allows me to get my work done and still spend the day with them. As soon as the big kids are on the bus we get our “loud” chores done like vacuuming, putting away dishes, and running the washing machine, etc. Then when Zech takes his morning nap, Elizabeth and I read books, play with flash cards to learn numbers and colors and listen to music. She is really thriving on the one-on-one attention that she has never had before now. After Zech’s nap, we all have lunch together, run errands and occupy ourselves with a myriad of toys. But, my most favorite part of the day is afternoon naps. For two hours during my day, I have two kids at school and two kids in bed and I get so much done.

This week alone I have…

Potty-trained Elizabeth,
watched Zech learn to crawl, sit up on his own and felt his first tooth,
got wardrobes organized for family pictures taken,
unpacked the rest of our moving boxes,
organized closets and drawers,
completed five scrap booking layouts,
started a king-size quilt for our new bed,
“put up” roughly 820 jars of various veggies (give or take 100),
gone to the IMA, Sam’s Club, a natural foods store and the zoo,
visited with out-of-town friends for a day,
and read about 120 books (granted they were the same 12 books that I read repeatedly and had lots of pictures but I still spent a lot of time reading.)

So what is on the agenda for this week? God only knows. I can’t wait to see what I will be able to get done. But who knows maybe I will just sit here and color or complete some patt-er-erns.  That sounds like fun.