first week of school

We survived it. Barely. Everything was going well until the stomach flu hit our house in a big way.

Let's start with Monday, no wait, how about the weekend...

Before starting school we had to say good bye to summer. The proper way to do that is with an afternoon at the beach and a delicious dinner of fire-roasted hot dogs. Unfortunately for us, many other people had that same idea. We were pit-less so I did what any self-respecting mom would do when her babies start complaining of hunger. I stabbed the dogs and walked over to the nearest pit, inhabited by Cal Poly girls. I'm only 10 years out so I didn't think it would be THAT weird, but yeah, it was awkward. "Hey guys, can I borrow your fire?" Weird looks. "Uh, yeah, sure." Then for the next five minutes I prayed those dogs would roast at lightening speed. Mission accomplished, kids feed, evening saved.

Monday morning we started off with a delicious breakfast casserole and fruit. The beauty of home schooling is that I don't have to be out the door at 7:30am fully dressed and looking effortless as I scoot my children into their classrooms. I don't have to throw on a hat and pretend that I actually PLANNED to wear a hat rather than shower that morning. Jason can sleep. The boy NEEDS his sleep. Cameron can wear her weird outfits. And we can start school at the beautiful hour of 9 o'clock...

Don't these kids look happy? An hour and a half earlier they didn't look this happy. And none of us had to sit in school traffic. Beautiful!

And so, we were off to a smooth start. Cameron sailed through her kindergarten lessons: Bible, math, reading, handwriting. She joins Jason for some history, science art and music. Jason and I discussed the plan for this year before this morning arrived. He understands that I will have to spend more time with Cams so he needs to be able to read his schedule and do the assignments that he can do on his own until I am available to help him. So far, so good. The boy is a first-born, box-checker, just like his mom, so this works.

Little Miss Hayden had some special time playing with dad while the kids and I did school. She stayed out of trouble... today.

On Tuesday school went well once again. We will be doing art lessons on Tuesdays so we started off the program by looking at art that is realistic versus artwork that takes creative twists. The kids then painted fish but added unrealistic features and colors. I'll be using ideas from Art Projects for Kids and Deep Space Sparkle.

I took Jason to AWANA Tuesday night (which he LOVES) and then something awful began in our home. I had a restless night of sleep. I was awakened with nausea and at 7am Wednesday morning the horror began. I won't go into details here. My brother is better at "getting-sick-and-living-to-blog-about-it", so you can check out his blog for nasty disease details. But let me just say, that without my parents we would not have survived!

The kids and Darren got through school Wednesday morning but by the afternoon he was down too. My parents came and picked up the kids (even packing their bags and taking them overnight). I'm not sure what happened next because we spent the next 24-36 hours in a sick-induced haze. If you're one of those people who likes to see the good in every situation then you can rejoice with me for losing 2.5 lbs. in one day! (Darren lost 5... that guy has to beat me at everything!).

On Thursday afternoon the kids returned home and we did our schoolwork for the day. They like Thursdays because we do music appreciation. They become very animated conductors and dancers when we have our classical music CD playing. I'll have to figure out how to post video of that!

Friday was a breeze. After surviving week one, I'm sure we're bound to have a very successful year.