I made it

In keeping with family traditions, I took photos of my kids on their first day of school. Unfortunately it has been raining for two days, so the pictures are kind of soggy. But here they are in all their glory (and totally thrilled with holding the umbrella).

When Everett came downstairs for breakfast this is what he was wearing, complete with the nametag from vacation Bible school. I didn't say anything, but he later informed me that this is his school "uniform" and I need to wash it every night. Yeah, I'll get right on that. To further comment, he's paired a seersucker jacket with plain gray t-shirt and jeans. Quite the fashionista, takes after his dad.

I wouldn't say the day went beautifully, but it...went. And, we are all excited to do it again tomorrow. Everett's statement before bed was, "The second day of school is even better than the first." Let's hope so. I've got to tweak some things, but I really need to focus on these three and just get us into a routine. Then I can deal with adding babies to the crowd in a few months. I kept looking around thinking, "How am I going to manage? What in the world will we do?" Not a good first day attitude. Since it's overwhelming enough. It's hard to step back and realize that I'm homeschooling because we felt like God was calling us to do it. So I know that God is going to take care of us, BUT I don't remember that when I'm up to my knees in questions, pleads, and squabbles. Deep breath.

Honestly, we had a very rewarding day. Ella was fabulous (I was most worried about her), she patiently listened to me, worked hard, and kept herself entertained with quiet activities. We had a great moment during our math lesson (very basic right now), when she was so proud of herself for answering correctly. The problem kid turned out to be Eli, he wanted to "work, work, work" and that doesn't happen with kindergarden. Since he couldn't work, work, work, he bugged, bugged, bugged me. We sat down later and planned out things that he could do ALONE for tomorrow.